Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
ByMichael Kimmel
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Readers` Reviews
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
tasneem hiasat
What surprises me is how many reviewers seem to regard what Kimmel is saying as something new or unknown. Anyone with their eyes open can see the dehumanizing societal influences that have assaulted the humanity of young men over the past 40 years. In this same vein Kimmel(as do most of his feminist contemporaries) relishes amplifying the bad in young men and mutes the good. Keep it up Kimmel; keep dehumanizing men like your feminist contemporaries do and you are going to wind up with the male population you so richly deserve. Also, like your feminist contemporaries, go ahead and minimize empirical data from sources like the CDC that show young men commit suicide at the rate of five men for every one woman. The feminist movement will not acknowledge that misandry in our society has become profound, just as racial bigots in the fifties justified their racism and denied bigotry. Who is illustrating positive male role models these young men can relate to? They aren't in the broadcast or the printed media. Why isn't the word "man" or "men" uttered except in connection with crime or evil? The feminist movement does not love men nor is it about gender equality. Indeed they are so focused on dehumanizing men they do little to actually support the women they pretend to represent.
If one could step out of the forest and look at the trees, so to speak, and see the feminist movement for what is really is, they would find intense hatred of men woven into the core of the movement. A case in point can easily be found in mainstream media. The CBS show "The Talk" is a typical example, where Sharon Osborne along with a studio audience of mostly women hysterically laughed and praised the mutilation of male genitals by Catherine Kieu. You may recall she is the wife who cut off her husband's penis and stuffed it down the garbage disposal. This is more than hatred. It is sociopathic and psychotic but funny to an audience full of hysterically laughing women. The reason Kieu gave for this heinous act? He wanted a divorce.
If Kimmel, a renowned university sociologist who knows so much, were to stop demonizing men and instead focus on phenomenon like the growing woman's movement embrace of the SCUM manifesto, he would find much more hatred there than he ever could conjure up in men.
With gratuitous, male bashing like this, humanity is, at best heading into a 21st century stifled by gender and sexual apartheid. Profound separation of humanity will be the societal norm. Which group will be destined to benefit the most? That is what this regressive book is ultimately all about. -DK
If one could step out of the forest and look at the trees, so to speak, and see the feminist movement for what is really is, they would find intense hatred of men woven into the core of the movement. A case in point can easily be found in mainstream media. The CBS show "The Talk" is a typical example, where Sharon Osborne along with a studio audience of mostly women hysterically laughed and praised the mutilation of male genitals by Catherine Kieu. You may recall she is the wife who cut off her husband's penis and stuffed it down the garbage disposal. This is more than hatred. It is sociopathic and psychotic but funny to an audience full of hysterically laughing women. The reason Kieu gave for this heinous act? He wanted a divorce.
If Kimmel, a renowned university sociologist who knows so much, were to stop demonizing men and instead focus on phenomenon like the growing woman's movement embrace of the SCUM manifesto, he would find much more hatred there than he ever could conjure up in men.
With gratuitous, male bashing like this, humanity is, at best heading into a 21st century stifled by gender and sexual apartheid. Profound separation of humanity will be the societal norm. Which group will be destined to benefit the most? That is what this regressive book is ultimately all about. -DK
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
jane buyny
Kimmel's book is important because of its exploration NOT into morality, or individual failings, but rather of our culture: a cultural space he calls "Guyland." He explains this space not as a failing of individual young men. Guyland, Kimmel argues, can be understood in light of contemporary changes in the job culture (postponement of careers), technology (we live longer - what's the hurry?), family (postponement of marriage) and masculinity (what it means to be a man). This is not an exposé on what individuals are doing right or wrong, but a reflection on social and cultural shifts that explain what is often perceived as normal; "boys will be boys."
Geekomancy (Ree Reyes Series Book 1) :: A Lady Emily Mystery (Lady Emily Mysteries) - Behind the Shattered Glass :: A Beauty and the Beast Novel - A Beastly Tale - Book 3 :: Depravity: A Beastly Tale, Book 1 :: . . . And Other Complaints from an Angry Middle-Aged White Guy
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
kassandra
Michael Kimmel's "Guyland" has some interesting case histories and a few worthwhile things to say about how racial and cultural differences influence the behavior of young men, but it wasn't too long before the way he acts as though he's entitled to define women made me want to put his book through a paper shredder and tell the library it was lost. (I didn't.) In Kimmel's view, any woman who doesn't adhere to the version of feminism advocated by privileged, upper-middle-class, middle-aged-bordering-on-elderly female academics and "cultural leaders" is anti-feminist - even if they themselves say otherwise. I've read various works by the writers he describes this way, and Kimmel's description of them as anti-feminist is about as far off the mark as California is from Poland. He's obviously ignorant of dissident feminism, fourth-wave feminism, et cetera. The writers he calls anti-feminist describe themselves as feminists. What gives him the idea that he can define people's thoughts and beliefs in a way that they themselves would not define them? Does he realize the irony of a man telling women which of them are real feminists?
I don't claim that only women can write about women, but people writing about groups they don't belong to should feel an obligation to understand that group as best they can. The only women Kimmel seems to understand are the Gloria Steinems of the world - deviate from that mindset, and you're an anti-feminist. His research is sloppy in other areas - writing ten years after the Columbine High School shooting, he has no excuse for his uber-simplistic explanation of its causes - and his Reviving-Ophelia-style characterization of teenage girls is ridiculous in an age where girls have nearly every academic advantage over boys and are constantly getting the message that they should be strong and assertive. I didn't agree with everything James Garbarino wrote in "See Jane Hit," but at least he acknowledged that girls are much more aggressive than they used to be. Kimmel states in the introduction that the inhabitants of "Guyland" are mainly upper-middle-class white men, but as his book goes on it takes on the tone of a work that's supposed to be about young men, period. He seems disdainful of religious people, but he would do well to note that males who are taught and who believe that females are their fellow children of God and that it is a sin to mistreat them aren't the ones raping girls at the frat house.
As a law student and a "Gone With the Wind" fan, I've also got to object to his description of Scarlett and Rhett's night of rough sex as rape. Women enjoying sexual submission to men is not wrong, disordered, or anti-feminist (and the same goes for men enjoying sexual submission to women). According to Kimmel, in modern real life, Rhett would be headed to jail. According to the law, in modern real life, Rhett would only be heading to jail if Scarlett pressed charges. Women who have just enjoyed the best sex of their lives do not press rape charges - no, not even if the Michael Kimmels of the world and their second-wave-feminist comrades wring their hands and wail. No doubt Kimmel would claim that poor, benighted Scarlett didn't really understand the horror that had been perpetrated upon her. There's a nasty streak of chauvanism in Kimmel's smug assumption that he's entitled to define what women think or feel even if they themselves disagree with him. He's arrogant and his book is largely a waste of time.
I don't claim that only women can write about women, but people writing about groups they don't belong to should feel an obligation to understand that group as best they can. The only women Kimmel seems to understand are the Gloria Steinems of the world - deviate from that mindset, and you're an anti-feminist. His research is sloppy in other areas - writing ten years after the Columbine High School shooting, he has no excuse for his uber-simplistic explanation of its causes - and his Reviving-Ophelia-style characterization of teenage girls is ridiculous in an age where girls have nearly every academic advantage over boys and are constantly getting the message that they should be strong and assertive. I didn't agree with everything James Garbarino wrote in "See Jane Hit," but at least he acknowledged that girls are much more aggressive than they used to be. Kimmel states in the introduction that the inhabitants of "Guyland" are mainly upper-middle-class white men, but as his book goes on it takes on the tone of a work that's supposed to be about young men, period. He seems disdainful of religious people, but he would do well to note that males who are taught and who believe that females are their fellow children of God and that it is a sin to mistreat them aren't the ones raping girls at the frat house.
As a law student and a "Gone With the Wind" fan, I've also got to object to his description of Scarlett and Rhett's night of rough sex as rape. Women enjoying sexual submission to men is not wrong, disordered, or anti-feminist (and the same goes for men enjoying sexual submission to women). According to Kimmel, in modern real life, Rhett would be headed to jail. According to the law, in modern real life, Rhett would only be heading to jail if Scarlett pressed charges. Women who have just enjoyed the best sex of their lives do not press rape charges - no, not even if the Michael Kimmels of the world and their second-wave-feminist comrades wring their hands and wail. No doubt Kimmel would claim that poor, benighted Scarlett didn't really understand the horror that had been perpetrated upon her. There's a nasty streak of chauvanism in Kimmel's smug assumption that he's entitled to define what women think or feel even if they themselves disagree with him. He's arrogant and his book is largely a waste of time.
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
rosie frascella
In GUYLAND, Kimmel bets with the house, in the sense that no one ever went broke putting down men and praising women...(Dr. Fail's book "Relationship Rescue" tells men "You're in the doghouse" and tells women "Ladies, we just don't get it. Way to go, Dr. Phil!) Thoroughly emasculated by the Palace of Feminism--Vassar College--Kimmel divides men into two camps: husbands/fathers (the only acceptable 'men'), or bachelors. Bachelors get to party, while husbands/fathers work, so bachelors are inherently irresponsible menaces to society. Newsflash for Kimmel: in order to get the funds to party with, Bachelors too have to work. So we build schools, bridges, roads, etc...Then it's Miller Time. Husbands/fathers do the same, but for them there IS no Miller Time, it's wipe-everyone's-bottom time. Perhaps this is more noble than Bachelorhood, but when the payoff is divorce and child support, don't act like everyone should opt into it.
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
mary reed
I did read this book already realizing that I largely disagree with Dr. Kimmel and his agenda. I am in the core group focussed on in the book. Largely lost in the analysis was addressing the elephant in the room, and that is how this country and the west have socially and institutionally treated boys and boyhood as a pathology. He fails to address both sides of the effeminized education system, the disparate funding for educational opportunities, social services/health, and recognize that boys like myself have been subjected to a family court system that is dominated by misandry and feminist jurisprudence. We have been stimatized by female teachers as second class citizens and either drugged or indoctrinated into compliance that we are inherently rapists and sexual offenders in need of being cured. He did make some correct conclusions, we see marriage as a zero sum game. But he failed to deliver with academic and inetellectual honesty as to why. More of blame boys for all the evils; and of course we are responsible for all of the childish acts of our female counterparts- the elephant is the duplicity and the unwillingeness to share the accountability and recognize that this country has stopped educating, promoting, engendering self-esteem, and encouraging boys. We simply have disengaged and tuned out the mantra of the Oprah mind-set, Single Mothers who told us we didn't need a dad etc. Our lack of investment is a statement- we reject this society- we don't care that much about its well being and health, because the way baby boomers like Dr. Kimmel measure the well being and health of society has nothing to do and excludes us. The truth of the issue he addresses though is it does have a negative impact on us, and society. But until false platitudes like Married Men are happier- as Dr. Kimmel incorrectly stated are continued the discussion is dead. For the record Dr. Kimmel, the most recent research shows that single, never been married men, are happier than their married counterparts- a trip down to the family court in your local jurisdiction should prove this to you. Also, I would agree with him that we do need to take more responsibility, but not to achieve the same goals he envisions- it is his goals that are the problem, we need to challenge them more actively.
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
amber macpherson
I am neither a Republican nor a heterosexual, nor was I ever involved in Guyland. Nevertheless, this author offends me. He is a Democrat whose mission in life is to bash anything that has anything to do with the Republicans, such as being a white male heterosexual, as opposed to the women, blacks, gays, etc. who form the special interest groups known collectively as the Democrats. He is one of those leftist kooks who think that masculinity is a vice. The books which are written by people who think the same way as Kimmel tend to be "cosmopolitan" if you know what I mean. I just had six books pop up on my screen that deal with the same subjects, and all six were written by people with "cosmopolitan" surnames similar to Kimmel's. This is not a coincidence.
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
candace
Firstly, I hope not everyone's been fooled by the half a dozen 5 star reviews below me. They ALL stem from the same misguided individual, a woman who regularly poses as a man to write positive reviews of anti-male books. Whether its couchbum, ginmar or another of the headcases that pollute the store is not particularly important here. How many of the other 5 star reviews are from this same indivual with a multiple personalty disorder I can't say - but when dozens of people appear to have written just a single review, and only for this book, then one can only be suspicious that this books ratings have been artificially boosted by underhanded tactics typical of the individuals involved. I have reported them all to the store, so by the time you read this review, they may already have been deleted - at least, if the store takes me as seriously as they would a woman making the equal complaint in the opposite direction.
Yet such terrorist tactics only serve to illustrate an important point concerning misandronistic publications - they're largely aimed at feminists with massive inferiority complexes, who need such books to boost their egos, and psychologically castrated men who like publications which put themselves down, or which make them feel better about themselves at the expense of other men. For we must put this book in its proper perspective if we are to make an accurate assessment of it - it is only the current zeitgeist of male hatred that makes such a publication possible. For example, in the 1930s it would have been possible to publish a book in the USA which made out that all African Americans were uncivilized criminals of low intelligence, and should only carefully be allowed to be integrated into white society. Such a book would be troublesome today only because African Americans have won for themselves enough rights to make such a publication extremely difficult, and it would not be undertaken by a major publisher. Similarly, books on the greediness, untrustworthiness and immorality of Jews were commonplace in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, but would be unthinkable now. Why? Because the zeitgeist has changed. People's mentalities have developed to the point where they've realised that you cannot consider all members of a social group as conforming to the common prejudice, that is, lazy blacks, greedy Jews, immoral homosexuals, or the 'guys' in Kimmel's latest misandronistic fantasy, 'guyland'. Kimmel is a bandwagon-jumper just like the worst history has to offer, and even worse, he himself is a man and should know that the kind of man he represents as being the typical man makes up just a small percentage of real men. I'm not surprised that this book is appealing to some man-haters severely wanting in the intellectual department (such as those mentioned above), but what is appalling is that, not counting all the fake reviews actually written by women, there are still some real reviews written by real men. These men seriously need to look at the real reasons why they follow the extremely prejudiced views of Kimmel. The equivalent book written about women would take the typical young 'disco queen' of today, or a young woman on the lines of Paris Hilton (without the money), and say that this is the typical woman of today - massive ego, inflated sense of self-importance, belief in her own innate superiority, and dramatic overestimation of her intelligence and abilities. That would be a false representation of all western women, but it would be exactly what Kimmel has done here. So my message to Kimmel is - why stop here? If you're really interested in equality, why don't you write the book I've proposed? Or is it possible that your prejudiced sense of equality is based on what makes the most financial sense - male bashing books sell far better than female bashing ones. Kimmel is a disgrace to the art of investigative book-writing, and anyone who enjoys his work can only be pitied for their intellectual poverty. 1 star is too many for this drivel.
Yet such terrorist tactics only serve to illustrate an important point concerning misandronistic publications - they're largely aimed at feminists with massive inferiority complexes, who need such books to boost their egos, and psychologically castrated men who like publications which put themselves down, or which make them feel better about themselves at the expense of other men. For we must put this book in its proper perspective if we are to make an accurate assessment of it - it is only the current zeitgeist of male hatred that makes such a publication possible. For example, in the 1930s it would have been possible to publish a book in the USA which made out that all African Americans were uncivilized criminals of low intelligence, and should only carefully be allowed to be integrated into white society. Such a book would be troublesome today only because African Americans have won for themselves enough rights to make such a publication extremely difficult, and it would not be undertaken by a major publisher. Similarly, books on the greediness, untrustworthiness and immorality of Jews were commonplace in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, but would be unthinkable now. Why? Because the zeitgeist has changed. People's mentalities have developed to the point where they've realised that you cannot consider all members of a social group as conforming to the common prejudice, that is, lazy blacks, greedy Jews, immoral homosexuals, or the 'guys' in Kimmel's latest misandronistic fantasy, 'guyland'. Kimmel is a bandwagon-jumper just like the worst history has to offer, and even worse, he himself is a man and should know that the kind of man he represents as being the typical man makes up just a small percentage of real men. I'm not surprised that this book is appealing to some man-haters severely wanting in the intellectual department (such as those mentioned above), but what is appalling is that, not counting all the fake reviews actually written by women, there are still some real reviews written by real men. These men seriously need to look at the real reasons why they follow the extremely prejudiced views of Kimmel. The equivalent book written about women would take the typical young 'disco queen' of today, or a young woman on the lines of Paris Hilton (without the money), and say that this is the typical woman of today - massive ego, inflated sense of self-importance, belief in her own innate superiority, and dramatic overestimation of her intelligence and abilities. That would be a false representation of all western women, but it would be exactly what Kimmel has done here. So my message to Kimmel is - why stop here? If you're really interested in equality, why don't you write the book I've proposed? Or is it possible that your prejudiced sense of equality is based on what makes the most financial sense - male bashing books sell far better than female bashing ones. Kimmel is a disgrace to the art of investigative book-writing, and anyone who enjoys his work can only be pitied for their intellectual poverty. 1 star is too many for this drivel.
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
analida
This "guy" has NO IDEA about men and masculinity. He's attempting to define "the new man" from a feminist perspective. It's so blatantly obvious he's a feminist sycophant. An academic/elitist who wouldn't know manhood if he tripped over it! This book is utter garbage and wreaks of feminist "man bad/woman good" propaganda. It's a treatise on first shaming and then converting young men into feminists. Pathetic!
Professor Kimmel does NOT speak for genuine boys and men.
Professor Kimmel does NOT speak for genuine boys and men.
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
ben howard
Kimmel is completely biased. My stupid Human Development professor made us read this stupid book. Kimmel does not give a balanced study. He studies guys who fit his criteria and he makes it seem like the problem he is studying is an epidemic. I've met all kinds of people out there and many of us have also met all kinds of people. When it comes to guys I've met only a small handful who fit into his "Guyland" theory. This book is going to be one of those idiotic books that will end up in the back of the library in the next ten years. There's nothing wrong with being a pro-feminist or pro or anti anything, as long as you acknowledge the opposite side's negatives and POSITIVES. He does not present the guys who are succeeding in life, who have fruitful careers and relationships. He only takes about the "failures" the "guys." And he makes it seem like it's a national epidemic worst than obesity or heart disease.
My professor was also a feminist moron. She kept showing us biased evidence. She showed us these stupid pictures of action figures from the late 90's and showed us pictures that showed how they kept getting bigger and bigger. She was trying to make a stupid point that toy makers were trying to persuade little boys that this was the image they should be looking up to. Well, I found myself in Wal-Mart a few days later and decided to look at the action figures that they were selling. And most if not all the action figures were all normal. Some were muscular, but nothing like the ones that she showed is in class. It is Kimmel and my professor who are giving feminist a bad name.
My professor was also a feminist moron. She kept showing us biased evidence. She showed us these stupid pictures of action figures from the late 90's and showed us pictures that showed how they kept getting bigger and bigger. She was trying to make a stupid point that toy makers were trying to persuade little boys that this was the image they should be looking up to. Well, I found myself in Wal-Mart a few days later and decided to look at the action figures that they were selling. And most if not all the action figures were all normal. Some were muscular, but nothing like the ones that she showed is in class. It is Kimmel and my professor who are giving feminist a bad name.
★ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
dylan
Michael's idea of adulthood is where the broken children live. Look at president Bush, Donald Trump, or Tom Cruise. Do they seem like men to you?
At least the so-called "Guys" Michael talks about can smell a rat. If you want to know why young men resist "adulthood", it's best described in Robert Blys' book "Iron John." Michael's idea of adulthood lacks the elements that develop a male into a man. "Modern adulthood" is where the children live. Going to war, over-populating the planet, and oppressing others is not what real men do. So when a young man refuses to conform he is labeled a guy in Guyland?
Maybe the author should look in the mirror and try to figure out what elements define man-hood. Start with love and compassion.
At least the so-called "Guys" Michael talks about can smell a rat. If you want to know why young men resist "adulthood", it's best described in Robert Blys' book "Iron John." Michael's idea of adulthood lacks the elements that develop a male into a man. "Modern adulthood" is where the children live. Going to war, over-populating the planet, and oppressing others is not what real men do. So when a young man refuses to conform he is labeled a guy in Guyland?
Maybe the author should look in the mirror and try to figure out what elements define man-hood. Start with love and compassion.
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
carol sparks
Michael Kimmel's GUYLAND is a masterpiece -- of manipulation and deceit.
Ostensibly a concerned but kindly portrait of young American males, the book is actually a scathing, unforgiving indictment. Indeed, an in-depth analysis of how adroitly Kimmel has crafted his monumental insult of young American males and impugned their dignity -- while patting himself on the back for being simultaneously insightful and avuncular -- is the stuff of a doctor's thesis with potential to run for more pages than the book itself. This review constitutes but a brief glance at a few of the salient points that such a thesis would highlight.
It is through a combination of neatly interwoven tacks that Kimmel navigates the tricky process of passing off a brutal -- and very shallow -- portrait of young males as a thoughtful assessment.
The overall structure of the book, in and of itself, constitutes Kimmel's primary tack. Focusing, in sequence, upon various unseemly aspects of Guyland -- the term Kimmel has coined to demark the social and psychological world of males approximately 16 to 26 years in age -- he carefully cushions his words with polite disclaimers.
The basic gist of what Kimmel initially tell us is this: The wonderful young man you care about probably is not like what you'll be reading here. But you should know about the "disturbing undercurrent" (p. 9) of the realm in which he spends much of his time.
Then, as the book progresses, Kimmel's disclaimers become less cautious. Eventually they are mere passing mentions and finally they all but completely disappear. In this manner, slowly over dozens of pages, Kimmel stealthily escalates his unwary readers' ire as he heats up his criticism. At last -- without our consciously realizing that the concerned analysis has turned into an excoriating diatribe -- we have come to understand that our beloved young man, at heart, is actually a scoundrel.
Kimmel saves his best for last, launching into a fevered discussion of the harassment and rape of women. At this point, unless we have been paying attention to the tack and putting up psychological defenses, we find ourselves maneuvered into the passive position of uncomplaining (and perhaps by now even supportive) witness to Kimmel's most impassioned passages -- collectively, an orgiastic thrashing of his subjects' now-unconscious bodies. Indeed, our blood may boil so indignantly that it may escape our notice that Kimmel does not even mention how young men, too, get victimized by the opposite sex -- with far-reaching consequences and, unlike victimized women, with no sympathy from the media or the criminal justice system (for one thought-provoking depiction of the phenomenon, I recommend It's Not About the Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Case and the Lives It Shattered, by Don Yaeger with Mike Pressler).
Embedded within the structure of this screed of intellectual terrorism lie several additional tacks for seducing readers to agree with Kimmel's woeful conclusions.
One insidious tack for imbuing his writing with an apocryphal aura of credibility -- and thereby deflecting potential criticism that he is nothing but a pompous, finger-wagging scold -- is to state, every now and then, positive things about young males. But Kimmel artfully makes these concessions about their good qualities with extreme care -- backhandedly placing his upbeat statements within the chapter, paragraph or sentence structure to ensure that they are tinged with doubt, or, offset by some assessment or other of ignominy. Either way, Kimmel essentially wants us to understand that if we wish to praise young males for any reason, then doing so ought to leave a bad taste in our mouths.
Another tack -- that imparts to Kimmel's writing a simulacrum of broad-mindedness and simultaneously helps to protect him against accusations that his views are rigid or ideological -- is to acknowledge that, yes, alternative perspectives about young men do exist. Impliedly, Kimmel has been willing to give these other views his serious consideration while arriving at his own conclusions.
Indeed, the casual reader might think, what more broad-mindedness could Kimmel possibly reveal about himself than to include some of these alternative perspectives -- as expressed by the very young males that Kimmel interviewed and about whom he draws such scornful judgments? According to Kimmel, many of them feel browbeaten and violated in ways that makes it very difficult to live in comity with society at large -- a society that seems out to get them at every turn. "[A]ngy right-wing radio personalities," according to Kimmel, constitute a key source of "permission" for young men's "aggrieved entitlement." (pp. 161-63) Therefore, we are to understand, most of them are rash, selfish and unreasonable.
However, the careful reader will note, if a young man successfully expresses his angst in a cogent way about "substantive issues" (p. 162), Kimmel pays him no heed.
One such fellow, a 22-year-old named Matt, does exactly that and is quoted at length. (p. 161) Kimmel's response is to ignore the issues completely and to carry on about "unacceptable" rhetoric instead. Kimmel apparently assumes that his smooth side-stepping of some meaty topics of discussion will go unnoticed. And, indeed, perhaps the casual reader, caught up in Kimmel's drama-by-distortion, will regard Matt's words simply as transitory, distracting static midst Kimmel's titillatingly hair-raising narrative.
But the issues that young Matt raises, along with many more, deserve very much to be pondered -- and there are some noteworthy writers doing so.
To be sure, Kimmel does not pretend to be the sole published author who writes about gender issues, and he makes approving reference to several writers, ranging from the famous (e.g., Susan Faludi and Carol Gilligan) to the obscure (Norah Vincent). Therefore, it is inconceivable that Kimmel is unfamiliar with writers whose perspectives differ markedly from his and, at their core, have sympathetic understanding for young males' feelings. But he will discuss only one such author -- Christina Hoff Sommers -- and it is for the sole purpose of trying to discredit her widely-praised book The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men. Kimmel pooh-poohs Sommers's concerns, maintains silence about the successful programs she describes for improving boys' academic performance, and dismisses her out of hand with a jaw-droppingly ludicrous mischaracterization of her conclusion.
Here is how Kimmel does it. The old chestnut, "boys will be boys," according to Kimmel, gets invoked mindlessly by society at large to excuse young males' wrongdoing. Sommers invokes the phrase too. Therefore, Kimmel tells us through innuendo, this means she believes that bad behavior is acceptable and normal. Obviously, then, with this bit of perversity as Sommers's salient point, the woman must be a nutjob.
But Sommers makes no such barbaric claim, and she means something totally different by writing "boys will be boys": young males' unique personal energy and joie de vivre deserve to be acknowledged and honored -- so these qualities can be channeled productively.
With his below-the-belt strike at Sommers, Kimmel takes an audacious gamble with his credibility -- because some readers may actually have read THE WAR AGAINST BOYS too. Whether or not they agree with the thesis of Sommers's book, Kimmel's willfully duplicitous re-framing of Sommers's writing will be instantly recognizable -- and they would have to be nutjobs to believe that Kimmel is being forthright.
But Kimmel dares not risk even passing mention of certain other writers with perspectives different from his own -- and it is for good reason. Inadvertently prodding unfamiliar readers' curiosity about them could not only make him look dishonest and foolish but could prove catastrophic for him. Specifically, Warren Farrell's seven books present a wealth of data and statistics that would prove the majority of Kimmel's specious contentions to be embarrassingly inaccurate -- especially his repetitious carping about male "entitlement." Additionally, two books by McGill University professors Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young (part of an ongoing development of a series about misandry) not only express views very different from Kimmel's but embody the highest standards of probity and intellectual rigor. GUYLAND, in contrast, would seem as nothing but a bundle of sanctimonious rodomontade and flapdoodle suited, at best, as source material (especially its catchy title) for a sensationalistic miniseries on Lifetime TV.
Kimmel is far too smart to tell very many outright lies in GUYLAND. Instead, he cherry-picks facts in support of his contentions while ignoring, trivializing, or mischaracterizing facts that militate against the book's disheartening conclusions. Kimmel follows this tack with such wild abandon that, for any reader who possesses a full-spectrum education on gender issues, it is blatantly obvious. But for the less-informed reader, Kimmel's writing may seem very convincing. And, in these readers' minds, why should Kimmel be perceived as proffering anything besides clear-minded truth? After all, Kimmel is the father of a young son himself (a fact repeatedly affirmed throughout the book). Would such an author not have his own scion's best interests at heart?
But, as explained above, Kimmel does not content himself with arousing readers' concern. For Kimmel, concern is merely the launching platform from which he seeks to propel us into stratospheric realms of outrage. Alas for Kimmel, sometimes he ham-handedly contradicts himself in the process.
To cite one example, Kimmel bashes males first by invoking a stereotypical view of masculinity that he calls "The Guy Code," lamenting its notion that men should "show no emotions at all." (pp. 49-50) The fact that suppression of emotions is necessary for the self-sacrificing role that society expects males to fulfill -- as providers and protectors -- does not warrant mention in Kimmel's analysis.
Next Kimmel tells a personal story in which he ridicules young men who do show emotion (specifically, anger) -- by describing them as "angry white males." (p. 60) Kimmel even puts the phrasal epithet in quotation marks, ensuring that readers will recognize the derisive insult for what it is and enhancing his chances of provoking readers' deepest contempt too.
But why should we feel appalled by young men's anger, and why are they wrong for feeling the way they do?
According to Kimmel, the emotion is unjustified -- and utterly inexplicable -- except to the degree that it arrogantly arises out of frustrated "entitlement." Kimmel uses a fascinating rhetorical sleight of hand to try to prove his point.
In this specific instance, Kimmel was a featured panelist on a TV talk show with the inflammatory title, "A Black Woman Stole My Job." On the air, Kimmel mocked and taunted the men by asking: "Where did they get the idea it was 'their' job? Why wasn't the show called 'A Black Woman Got a Job,' . . . ?" (p. 60)
But a far more honest -- and compassionate -- line of questioning would have been: Where did they get the idea that, by putting loaded language in their mouths, the show's producer had any intention of hosting a rational debate on affirmative action? Why couldn't the guests have foreseen that the show might as well have been called 'Let's Have Fun Tricking and Skewering Naive Young Men'?"
Apparently oblivious to the irony, Kimmel begins the section of his book wherein he relates his smug, self-satisfied anecdote with the statement, "Many young men today have a shockingly strong sense of male superiority and a diminished capacity for empathy." (p. 59)
So who is Kimmel and why does he present such an outrageously slanted, calculatedly awful portrait of young males?
Kimmel answers the first part of this question himself: he is "a sociologist" specializing in "the study of men and masculinity," which is "a relatively new subfield of the study of 'gender.'" (p. 22)
There is a long explanation behind what Kimmel is telling his readers about his place in the academic world, and it is provided in detail by Professors Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge in Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies. According to these authors, gender studies -- a.k.a. feminist studies -- is not so much a field of serious scholarship and learning as a highly politicized "academic arm" for the women's movement. Like Kimmel, these authors consider gender to be a legitimate basis for research into numerous aspects of the human experience. But in the postmodern academe, these authors regretfully report, research and analysis in gender issues seldom get undertaken with any regard for scholarly integrity. Even the most basic standards of objective writing -- like substantiating conclusions with concrete evidence -- all too often get set aside in favor of more subjective "ways of knowing," which are supposedly superior. But, again, the primary purpose of feminist studies is not so much education as persuasion -- for the espousing of a specific worldview as well as for unquestioning acceptance of feminism's pre-determined prescriptions for correcting human flaws. GUYLAND is a book very much in this vein and is remarkable for its excellence in disguising its monumental deficits so readers will think that it is something it is not.
Indeed, it is more than passing interest to note, near the end of GUYLAND, that Kimmel openly acknowledges he is a feminist. And he affirms how sweet life would be for the recalcitrant young males of Guyland if only they would become feminists too: "Feminism loves men enough to expect them to act more honorably and actually believes them capable of doing so." (p. 264)
But what kind of richness in life does Kimmel believe men will experience when they embrace the "love" that feminism extends so generously to them?
Strangely enough -- judging from the tone of Kimmel's writing -- it apparently means that males' greatest fulfillment and self-actualization is to be found in a state of shame and embarrassment that arises out of stoop-shouldered self-abnegation and hand-wringing obeisance to their betters, i.e., to females.
Writing of feminism's "love" for men in a book about 16-to-26-year-old males seems downright bizarre when we consider that one of the most vicious feminism-inspired slogans of the last decade -- a multi-million-dollar blockbuster for the company that coined it -- was directed at the subjects of GUYLAND when they were children: "BOYS ARE STUPID, THROW ROCKS AT THEM!"
At its outset, GUYLAND purports to try to "enable guys" to "steer a course with greater integrity and honesty, so they can be true not to some artificial code, but to themselves." (p. 8) But feminism itself -- at least Kimmel's version of it -- constitutes an "artificial code." In one of his most blatant misstatements of reality, Kimmel claims feminism is about "equality." (p. 263) Ironically, one of the most dramatic aspects of inequality that exists between the sexes -- with which feminism refuses to grapple and Kimmel does not even acknowledge -- manifests itself during the very period of males' lives that is the specific focus of GUYLAND: males' obligation to register for Selective Service and to live thenceforward knowing that, if called upon, they must subject themselves to the draft. No woman in American history has ever experienced the phenomenon, nor would any sane one want to, whether in the idealistic spirit of fostering "equality" or for any other reason. Would it not make sense, in at least a few of the hundreds of interviews Kimmel claims he conducted, to ask how "the guys" face and then carry through on fulfilling their extraordinary burden? If feminism really wanted gender equity -- and not just privileges for women unaccompanied by obligations -- then Kimmel would not have done his subjects this highhanded disservice.
Another area of inequality that feminism fails to address is in the realm of male/female personal relationships. Despite females' supposedly "liberated" status, the male is expected, as in the days of yore, to handle all the difficult work of initiating relationships as well as to finance their progression into something long-lasting. Maybe the enormous amount of casual "hooking up" on college campuses -- which Kimmel disparages -- arises not so much out of males' sexism as males' brass-tacks level inability to afford dating. Especially because unprecedented numbers of women earn substantial paychecks nowadays, why shouldn't equality -- in the form of shared responsibility -- be promoted in this realm?
But feminism does not teach women that they should even think that new -- and sometimes very considerable -- burdens might exist as inherent accompaniments to women's expanding lifestyle options. Instead, feminism teaches women that their lives should in every respect be enjoyable and personally fulfilling, and it is not part of the deal to perform any of the onerous duties traditionally belonging to males.
So if it is true, as Kimmel claims, that many young male denizens of Guyland do not respect young females, perhaps to some degree it is because "the guys," like any normal person, find it very hard to feel respect for someone who relates to them in ways that are hypocritical. Maybe, despite all the "minuses" that Kimmel describes about Guyland, young men tend to bond with their male peers instead of their female peers because their relationships among themselves tend to be inherently more honest.
But even if males accept the fact that they must do all the initiating and paying in relationships with females -- because females simply will not do it -- males' chariness in the face of potential long-term commitment is perfectly understandable in light of the recent track record of females' behavior. In divorces where both husband and wife have college degrees -- the vast majority of potential marriages among the population under Kimmel's discussion -- 90% are initiated by the woman. With an overall divorce rate of 50%, this basically means that, for the males of GUYLAND, investing one's life in a marriage is akin to investing all one's savings in a speculative "flyer" on the stock market. Maybe young males' reluctance to marry is not a sign of "aversion to adulthood" (p. 205), as Kimmel claims, but, instead, a sign of intelligence.
Selective Service registration and responsibility for initiating and financing male/female personal relationships are but two of many important issues for young males that Kimmel will not touch with a ten-foot pole. So it is utterly preposterous to state that he advocates on behalf of "equality" and wishes to "steer guys" in a helpful way.
So, returning to the second part of the question above and rephrasing it: Why, then, is Kimmel -- to put it bluntly -- so mean?
I have no idea and can only speculate that Kimmel's motives may have something to do with the glory that he experiences as one of America's foremost voices in public discourse on gender issues. For better or for worse, the discourse is presently dominated -- with uncompromising ferociousness -- by dogmatic feminist perspectives.
The words of author/philosopher Francis Baumli come to mind:
"These feminist men -- the squalling hysterical type -- for all their protests against male power actually garner a great deal of power for themselves by thus setting themselves up as the archetypal protectors of women and feminism. They are, in their own minds at least, and in the ranks of their (relatively few, we hope) cohorts, the alpha males. It is a parasitic status, of course, and a pathetic power. But it is real, nonetheless, and they pride and preen themselves with it, although they would be the first to deny that they are feeling power, even as they glory in it."
If Baumli is correct, then perhaps another way to characterize GUYLAND is to say it constitutes a pseudosensitive man's personal form of chest-pounding.
The power that Kimmel experiences as a thoroughgoing feminist evidently feels so rapturously intoxicating that he is even willing, in GUYLAND, to sacrifice his own son at feminism's altar. "Nine years ago," Kimmel reports, "at Zachary's naming ceremony, we each offered a wish for our newborn son. When it was my turn, I quoted the poet Adrienne Rich, who wrote 'If I could have one wish for my own sons, it is that they should have the courage of women.'" (p. xvii)
Although the story, by early 21st century standards, might seem like a sweet-little-nothing, in the context of a book about gender issues, it deserves to be examined carefully and objectively.
Although human nature is universal, we nevertheless traditionally associate certain qualities more with one sex than the other. Sometimes it is because of stereotyping, and sometimes it is because our culture tends to provide one sex with more dramatic ways to manifest certain virtues than it provides to the other sex. Kimmel himself acknowledges these differences in GUYLAND. (p. 270)
In our culture, for a variety of reasons, courage is a virtue we traditionally associate with the male sex. Zachary is male. But by quoting Adrienne Rich, Kimmel is cruelly denying for his son a strength that society affirms for Zachary, and Kimmel is claiming that to develop courage, the boy should look to the opposite sex for inspiration.
If this somehow feels "all right" for us, then it is worthwhile to pause and apply the gold standard for determining the presence or absence of gender bias: reversal. Let us imagine that, instead of naming a baby boy, Kimmel and those close to him were naming a baby girl. Imagine the reaction had Kimmel found some corresponding quotation from a male poet and invoked it on the baby's behalf: "If I could have one wish for my own daughters, it is that they should have the nurturing ability of men."
If Kimmel dared repeat the story in writing, indignant cries of "bigotry!" and "sexism!" would be heard far and wide across the land.
Indeed, in American culture today, especially in academia and among those entrusted with the formation of public policy, feminism occupies an unassailable position -- supreme and inviolate -- akin to an officially-sanctioned religion. Dissidents and would-be reformers are either coerced into silence or shown the way to society's periphery. There, any criticism they may publish about feminism -- regardless of how constructive -- more often than not gets ignored. And if some of the heretical blasphemy does wind up getting widespread attention (like Sommers's THE WAR AGAINST BOYS) and feminists must acknowledge its existence, they could hardly be more scoffing than if they were commenting on Unabomber rants.
Kimmel -- by toeing feminism's ideological line with a zeal that exceeds even that of many female acolytes -- guarantees his continuing occupancy of an exalted position in the pantheon of the feminist establishment. So, for the foreseeable future, Kimmel can safely write whatever atrocious folderol he wants with impunity -- no matter how much hurt he perpetrates against males or how much animosity and mistrust he fosters between the sexes. Indeed, the higher the barriers that Kimmel and his fellow mainstream "gender experts" construct to forefend genuine understanding in the realm of discussion that they control, the more in demand these venal rogues can assuredly find themselves in the future. Whether as status-building talking heads on TV talk shows, fee-generating members of blue-ribbon assessment panels, or authors of additional misleading books and articles -- as long as we remain in their thrall, there will be no end to their tsk-tsk-ing.
But the insanity of the present, of course, is unsustainable. To quote Martin Luther King, Jr., "Life cannot be fooled."
Someday -- maybe several generations hence -- male-bashing will inevitably cease to be considered "enlightened" behavior and people will look back with aghast bewilderment at the taken-for-granted anti-male Zeitgeist of our era, of which Kimmel is a guiding light. If, at that time, someone establishes a Museum of Misandry with which to document the phenomenon, then a copy of GUYLAND will deserve to sit in its own glass display case, at the center of one of the institution's exhibit halls.
* * * * * *
This review is dedicated, with deep gratitude and affection, to my magnificent young friend Andrew -- one of "the guys" -- whose boundless lovingkindness and camaraderie, as much as his professional expertise, have been among the most precious gifts that life has bestowed upon my middle years. -- P.A.
Ostensibly a concerned but kindly portrait of young American males, the book is actually a scathing, unforgiving indictment. Indeed, an in-depth analysis of how adroitly Kimmel has crafted his monumental insult of young American males and impugned their dignity -- while patting himself on the back for being simultaneously insightful and avuncular -- is the stuff of a doctor's thesis with potential to run for more pages than the book itself. This review constitutes but a brief glance at a few of the salient points that such a thesis would highlight.
It is through a combination of neatly interwoven tacks that Kimmel navigates the tricky process of passing off a brutal -- and very shallow -- portrait of young males as a thoughtful assessment.
The overall structure of the book, in and of itself, constitutes Kimmel's primary tack. Focusing, in sequence, upon various unseemly aspects of Guyland -- the term Kimmel has coined to demark the social and psychological world of males approximately 16 to 26 years in age -- he carefully cushions his words with polite disclaimers.
The basic gist of what Kimmel initially tell us is this: The wonderful young man you care about probably is not like what you'll be reading here. But you should know about the "disturbing undercurrent" (p. 9) of the realm in which he spends much of his time.
Then, as the book progresses, Kimmel's disclaimers become less cautious. Eventually they are mere passing mentions and finally they all but completely disappear. In this manner, slowly over dozens of pages, Kimmel stealthily escalates his unwary readers' ire as he heats up his criticism. At last -- without our consciously realizing that the concerned analysis has turned into an excoriating diatribe -- we have come to understand that our beloved young man, at heart, is actually a scoundrel.
Kimmel saves his best for last, launching into a fevered discussion of the harassment and rape of women. At this point, unless we have been paying attention to the tack and putting up psychological defenses, we find ourselves maneuvered into the passive position of uncomplaining (and perhaps by now even supportive) witness to Kimmel's most impassioned passages -- collectively, an orgiastic thrashing of his subjects' now-unconscious bodies. Indeed, our blood may boil so indignantly that it may escape our notice that Kimmel does not even mention how young men, too, get victimized by the opposite sex -- with far-reaching consequences and, unlike victimized women, with no sympathy from the media or the criminal justice system (for one thought-provoking depiction of the phenomenon, I recommend It's Not About the Truth: The Untold Story of the Duke Lacrosse Case and the Lives It Shattered, by Don Yaeger with Mike Pressler).
Embedded within the structure of this screed of intellectual terrorism lie several additional tacks for seducing readers to agree with Kimmel's woeful conclusions.
One insidious tack for imbuing his writing with an apocryphal aura of credibility -- and thereby deflecting potential criticism that he is nothing but a pompous, finger-wagging scold -- is to state, every now and then, positive things about young males. But Kimmel artfully makes these concessions about their good qualities with extreme care -- backhandedly placing his upbeat statements within the chapter, paragraph or sentence structure to ensure that they are tinged with doubt, or, offset by some assessment or other of ignominy. Either way, Kimmel essentially wants us to understand that if we wish to praise young males for any reason, then doing so ought to leave a bad taste in our mouths.
Another tack -- that imparts to Kimmel's writing a simulacrum of broad-mindedness and simultaneously helps to protect him against accusations that his views are rigid or ideological -- is to acknowledge that, yes, alternative perspectives about young men do exist. Impliedly, Kimmel has been willing to give these other views his serious consideration while arriving at his own conclusions.
Indeed, the casual reader might think, what more broad-mindedness could Kimmel possibly reveal about himself than to include some of these alternative perspectives -- as expressed by the very young males that Kimmel interviewed and about whom he draws such scornful judgments? According to Kimmel, many of them feel browbeaten and violated in ways that makes it very difficult to live in comity with society at large -- a society that seems out to get them at every turn. "[A]ngy right-wing radio personalities," according to Kimmel, constitute a key source of "permission" for young men's "aggrieved entitlement." (pp. 161-63) Therefore, we are to understand, most of them are rash, selfish and unreasonable.
However, the careful reader will note, if a young man successfully expresses his angst in a cogent way about "substantive issues" (p. 162), Kimmel pays him no heed.
One such fellow, a 22-year-old named Matt, does exactly that and is quoted at length. (p. 161) Kimmel's response is to ignore the issues completely and to carry on about "unacceptable" rhetoric instead. Kimmel apparently assumes that his smooth side-stepping of some meaty topics of discussion will go unnoticed. And, indeed, perhaps the casual reader, caught up in Kimmel's drama-by-distortion, will regard Matt's words simply as transitory, distracting static midst Kimmel's titillatingly hair-raising narrative.
But the issues that young Matt raises, along with many more, deserve very much to be pondered -- and there are some noteworthy writers doing so.
To be sure, Kimmel does not pretend to be the sole published author who writes about gender issues, and he makes approving reference to several writers, ranging from the famous (e.g., Susan Faludi and Carol Gilligan) to the obscure (Norah Vincent). Therefore, it is inconceivable that Kimmel is unfamiliar with writers whose perspectives differ markedly from his and, at their core, have sympathetic understanding for young males' feelings. But he will discuss only one such author -- Christina Hoff Sommers -- and it is for the sole purpose of trying to discredit her widely-praised book The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men. Kimmel pooh-poohs Sommers's concerns, maintains silence about the successful programs she describes for improving boys' academic performance, and dismisses her out of hand with a jaw-droppingly ludicrous mischaracterization of her conclusion.
Here is how Kimmel does it. The old chestnut, "boys will be boys," according to Kimmel, gets invoked mindlessly by society at large to excuse young males' wrongdoing. Sommers invokes the phrase too. Therefore, Kimmel tells us through innuendo, this means she believes that bad behavior is acceptable and normal. Obviously, then, with this bit of perversity as Sommers's salient point, the woman must be a nutjob.
But Sommers makes no such barbaric claim, and she means something totally different by writing "boys will be boys": young males' unique personal energy and joie de vivre deserve to be acknowledged and honored -- so these qualities can be channeled productively.
With his below-the-belt strike at Sommers, Kimmel takes an audacious gamble with his credibility -- because some readers may actually have read THE WAR AGAINST BOYS too. Whether or not they agree with the thesis of Sommers's book, Kimmel's willfully duplicitous re-framing of Sommers's writing will be instantly recognizable -- and they would have to be nutjobs to believe that Kimmel is being forthright.
But Kimmel dares not risk even passing mention of certain other writers with perspectives different from his own -- and it is for good reason. Inadvertently prodding unfamiliar readers' curiosity about them could not only make him look dishonest and foolish but could prove catastrophic for him. Specifically, Warren Farrell's seven books present a wealth of data and statistics that would prove the majority of Kimmel's specious contentions to be embarrassingly inaccurate -- especially his repetitious carping about male "entitlement." Additionally, two books by McGill University professors Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young (part of an ongoing development of a series about misandry) not only express views very different from Kimmel's but embody the highest standards of probity and intellectual rigor. GUYLAND, in contrast, would seem as nothing but a bundle of sanctimonious rodomontade and flapdoodle suited, at best, as source material (especially its catchy title) for a sensationalistic miniseries on Lifetime TV.
Kimmel is far too smart to tell very many outright lies in GUYLAND. Instead, he cherry-picks facts in support of his contentions while ignoring, trivializing, or mischaracterizing facts that militate against the book's disheartening conclusions. Kimmel follows this tack with such wild abandon that, for any reader who possesses a full-spectrum education on gender issues, it is blatantly obvious. But for the less-informed reader, Kimmel's writing may seem very convincing. And, in these readers' minds, why should Kimmel be perceived as proffering anything besides clear-minded truth? After all, Kimmel is the father of a young son himself (a fact repeatedly affirmed throughout the book). Would such an author not have his own scion's best interests at heart?
But, as explained above, Kimmel does not content himself with arousing readers' concern. For Kimmel, concern is merely the launching platform from which he seeks to propel us into stratospheric realms of outrage. Alas for Kimmel, sometimes he ham-handedly contradicts himself in the process.
To cite one example, Kimmel bashes males first by invoking a stereotypical view of masculinity that he calls "The Guy Code," lamenting its notion that men should "show no emotions at all." (pp. 49-50) The fact that suppression of emotions is necessary for the self-sacrificing role that society expects males to fulfill -- as providers and protectors -- does not warrant mention in Kimmel's analysis.
Next Kimmel tells a personal story in which he ridicules young men who do show emotion (specifically, anger) -- by describing them as "angry white males." (p. 60) Kimmel even puts the phrasal epithet in quotation marks, ensuring that readers will recognize the derisive insult for what it is and enhancing his chances of provoking readers' deepest contempt too.
But why should we feel appalled by young men's anger, and why are they wrong for feeling the way they do?
According to Kimmel, the emotion is unjustified -- and utterly inexplicable -- except to the degree that it arrogantly arises out of frustrated "entitlement." Kimmel uses a fascinating rhetorical sleight of hand to try to prove his point.
In this specific instance, Kimmel was a featured panelist on a TV talk show with the inflammatory title, "A Black Woman Stole My Job." On the air, Kimmel mocked and taunted the men by asking: "Where did they get the idea it was 'their' job? Why wasn't the show called 'A Black Woman Got a Job,' . . . ?" (p. 60)
But a far more honest -- and compassionate -- line of questioning would have been: Where did they get the idea that, by putting loaded language in their mouths, the show's producer had any intention of hosting a rational debate on affirmative action? Why couldn't the guests have foreseen that the show might as well have been called 'Let's Have Fun Tricking and Skewering Naive Young Men'?"
Apparently oblivious to the irony, Kimmel begins the section of his book wherein he relates his smug, self-satisfied anecdote with the statement, "Many young men today have a shockingly strong sense of male superiority and a diminished capacity for empathy." (p. 59)
So who is Kimmel and why does he present such an outrageously slanted, calculatedly awful portrait of young males?
Kimmel answers the first part of this question himself: he is "a sociologist" specializing in "the study of men and masculinity," which is "a relatively new subfield of the study of 'gender.'" (p. 22)
There is a long explanation behind what Kimmel is telling his readers about his place in the academic world, and it is provided in detail by Professors Daphne Patai and Noretta Koertge in Professing Feminism: Education and Indoctrination in Women's Studies. According to these authors, gender studies -- a.k.a. feminist studies -- is not so much a field of serious scholarship and learning as a highly politicized "academic arm" for the women's movement. Like Kimmel, these authors consider gender to be a legitimate basis for research into numerous aspects of the human experience. But in the postmodern academe, these authors regretfully report, research and analysis in gender issues seldom get undertaken with any regard for scholarly integrity. Even the most basic standards of objective writing -- like substantiating conclusions with concrete evidence -- all too often get set aside in favor of more subjective "ways of knowing," which are supposedly superior. But, again, the primary purpose of feminist studies is not so much education as persuasion -- for the espousing of a specific worldview as well as for unquestioning acceptance of feminism's pre-determined prescriptions for correcting human flaws. GUYLAND is a book very much in this vein and is remarkable for its excellence in disguising its monumental deficits so readers will think that it is something it is not.
Indeed, it is more than passing interest to note, near the end of GUYLAND, that Kimmel openly acknowledges he is a feminist. And he affirms how sweet life would be for the recalcitrant young males of Guyland if only they would become feminists too: "Feminism loves men enough to expect them to act more honorably and actually believes them capable of doing so." (p. 264)
But what kind of richness in life does Kimmel believe men will experience when they embrace the "love" that feminism extends so generously to them?
Strangely enough -- judging from the tone of Kimmel's writing -- it apparently means that males' greatest fulfillment and self-actualization is to be found in a state of shame and embarrassment that arises out of stoop-shouldered self-abnegation and hand-wringing obeisance to their betters, i.e., to females.
Writing of feminism's "love" for men in a book about 16-to-26-year-old males seems downright bizarre when we consider that one of the most vicious feminism-inspired slogans of the last decade -- a multi-million-dollar blockbuster for the company that coined it -- was directed at the subjects of GUYLAND when they were children: "BOYS ARE STUPID, THROW ROCKS AT THEM!"
At its outset, GUYLAND purports to try to "enable guys" to "steer a course with greater integrity and honesty, so they can be true not to some artificial code, but to themselves." (p. 8) But feminism itself -- at least Kimmel's version of it -- constitutes an "artificial code." In one of his most blatant misstatements of reality, Kimmel claims feminism is about "equality." (p. 263) Ironically, one of the most dramatic aspects of inequality that exists between the sexes -- with which feminism refuses to grapple and Kimmel does not even acknowledge -- manifests itself during the very period of males' lives that is the specific focus of GUYLAND: males' obligation to register for Selective Service and to live thenceforward knowing that, if called upon, they must subject themselves to the draft. No woman in American history has ever experienced the phenomenon, nor would any sane one want to, whether in the idealistic spirit of fostering "equality" or for any other reason. Would it not make sense, in at least a few of the hundreds of interviews Kimmel claims he conducted, to ask how "the guys" face and then carry through on fulfilling their extraordinary burden? If feminism really wanted gender equity -- and not just privileges for women unaccompanied by obligations -- then Kimmel would not have done his subjects this highhanded disservice.
Another area of inequality that feminism fails to address is in the realm of male/female personal relationships. Despite females' supposedly "liberated" status, the male is expected, as in the days of yore, to handle all the difficult work of initiating relationships as well as to finance their progression into something long-lasting. Maybe the enormous amount of casual "hooking up" on college campuses -- which Kimmel disparages -- arises not so much out of males' sexism as males' brass-tacks level inability to afford dating. Especially because unprecedented numbers of women earn substantial paychecks nowadays, why shouldn't equality -- in the form of shared responsibility -- be promoted in this realm?
But feminism does not teach women that they should even think that new -- and sometimes very considerable -- burdens might exist as inherent accompaniments to women's expanding lifestyle options. Instead, feminism teaches women that their lives should in every respect be enjoyable and personally fulfilling, and it is not part of the deal to perform any of the onerous duties traditionally belonging to males.
So if it is true, as Kimmel claims, that many young male denizens of Guyland do not respect young females, perhaps to some degree it is because "the guys," like any normal person, find it very hard to feel respect for someone who relates to them in ways that are hypocritical. Maybe, despite all the "minuses" that Kimmel describes about Guyland, young men tend to bond with their male peers instead of their female peers because their relationships among themselves tend to be inherently more honest.
But even if males accept the fact that they must do all the initiating and paying in relationships with females -- because females simply will not do it -- males' chariness in the face of potential long-term commitment is perfectly understandable in light of the recent track record of females' behavior. In divorces where both husband and wife have college degrees -- the vast majority of potential marriages among the population under Kimmel's discussion -- 90% are initiated by the woman. With an overall divorce rate of 50%, this basically means that, for the males of GUYLAND, investing one's life in a marriage is akin to investing all one's savings in a speculative "flyer" on the stock market. Maybe young males' reluctance to marry is not a sign of "aversion to adulthood" (p. 205), as Kimmel claims, but, instead, a sign of intelligence.
Selective Service registration and responsibility for initiating and financing male/female personal relationships are but two of many important issues for young males that Kimmel will not touch with a ten-foot pole. So it is utterly preposterous to state that he advocates on behalf of "equality" and wishes to "steer guys" in a helpful way.
So, returning to the second part of the question above and rephrasing it: Why, then, is Kimmel -- to put it bluntly -- so mean?
I have no idea and can only speculate that Kimmel's motives may have something to do with the glory that he experiences as one of America's foremost voices in public discourse on gender issues. For better or for worse, the discourse is presently dominated -- with uncompromising ferociousness -- by dogmatic feminist perspectives.
The words of author/philosopher Francis Baumli come to mind:
"These feminist men -- the squalling hysterical type -- for all their protests against male power actually garner a great deal of power for themselves by thus setting themselves up as the archetypal protectors of women and feminism. They are, in their own minds at least, and in the ranks of their (relatively few, we hope) cohorts, the alpha males. It is a parasitic status, of course, and a pathetic power. But it is real, nonetheless, and they pride and preen themselves with it, although they would be the first to deny that they are feeling power, even as they glory in it."
If Baumli is correct, then perhaps another way to characterize GUYLAND is to say it constitutes a pseudosensitive man's personal form of chest-pounding.
The power that Kimmel experiences as a thoroughgoing feminist evidently feels so rapturously intoxicating that he is even willing, in GUYLAND, to sacrifice his own son at feminism's altar. "Nine years ago," Kimmel reports, "at Zachary's naming ceremony, we each offered a wish for our newborn son. When it was my turn, I quoted the poet Adrienne Rich, who wrote 'If I could have one wish for my own sons, it is that they should have the courage of women.'" (p. xvii)
Although the story, by early 21st century standards, might seem like a sweet-little-nothing, in the context of a book about gender issues, it deserves to be examined carefully and objectively.
Although human nature is universal, we nevertheless traditionally associate certain qualities more with one sex than the other. Sometimes it is because of stereotyping, and sometimes it is because our culture tends to provide one sex with more dramatic ways to manifest certain virtues than it provides to the other sex. Kimmel himself acknowledges these differences in GUYLAND. (p. 270)
In our culture, for a variety of reasons, courage is a virtue we traditionally associate with the male sex. Zachary is male. But by quoting Adrienne Rich, Kimmel is cruelly denying for his son a strength that society affirms for Zachary, and Kimmel is claiming that to develop courage, the boy should look to the opposite sex for inspiration.
If this somehow feels "all right" for us, then it is worthwhile to pause and apply the gold standard for determining the presence or absence of gender bias: reversal. Let us imagine that, instead of naming a baby boy, Kimmel and those close to him were naming a baby girl. Imagine the reaction had Kimmel found some corresponding quotation from a male poet and invoked it on the baby's behalf: "If I could have one wish for my own daughters, it is that they should have the nurturing ability of men."
If Kimmel dared repeat the story in writing, indignant cries of "bigotry!" and "sexism!" would be heard far and wide across the land.
Indeed, in American culture today, especially in academia and among those entrusted with the formation of public policy, feminism occupies an unassailable position -- supreme and inviolate -- akin to an officially-sanctioned religion. Dissidents and would-be reformers are either coerced into silence or shown the way to society's periphery. There, any criticism they may publish about feminism -- regardless of how constructive -- more often than not gets ignored. And if some of the heretical blasphemy does wind up getting widespread attention (like Sommers's THE WAR AGAINST BOYS) and feminists must acknowledge its existence, they could hardly be more scoffing than if they were commenting on Unabomber rants.
Kimmel -- by toeing feminism's ideological line with a zeal that exceeds even that of many female acolytes -- guarantees his continuing occupancy of an exalted position in the pantheon of the feminist establishment. So, for the foreseeable future, Kimmel can safely write whatever atrocious folderol he wants with impunity -- no matter how much hurt he perpetrates against males or how much animosity and mistrust he fosters between the sexes. Indeed, the higher the barriers that Kimmel and his fellow mainstream "gender experts" construct to forefend genuine understanding in the realm of discussion that they control, the more in demand these venal rogues can assuredly find themselves in the future. Whether as status-building talking heads on TV talk shows, fee-generating members of blue-ribbon assessment panels, or authors of additional misleading books and articles -- as long as we remain in their thrall, there will be no end to their tsk-tsk-ing.
But the insanity of the present, of course, is unsustainable. To quote Martin Luther King, Jr., "Life cannot be fooled."
Someday -- maybe several generations hence -- male-bashing will inevitably cease to be considered "enlightened" behavior and people will look back with aghast bewilderment at the taken-for-granted anti-male Zeitgeist of our era, of which Kimmel is a guiding light. If, at that time, someone establishes a Museum of Misandry with which to document the phenomenon, then a copy of GUYLAND will deserve to sit in its own glass display case, at the center of one of the institution's exhibit halls.
* * * * * *
This review is dedicated, with deep gratitude and affection, to my magnificent young friend Andrew -- one of "the guys" -- whose boundless lovingkindness and camaraderie, as much as his professional expertise, have been among the most precious gifts that life has bestowed upon my middle years. -- P.A.
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
kate saunders
A complete reactionary stance from the flower-child generation (with baby bomber tendencies). Many of us have known for sometime that men are "no longer men" likewise, women are "no longer women". Genders roles have gone through some major changes since the fifties and now we see younger people delaying the "nuclear family" until later stages in life. AND GOOD FOR THEM! Society will not fall apart if younger people are delaying the serious commitment it takes to be selfless, for the sake of the spouse and children. As long as their choices are sincere and put them in a place they want to be and arent hurting others...who cares.
In fact, I think it should be law that no one under the age of 21 (25?) should get married. And no one under the age of 30 should be granted a divorce (with exceptions, of course). Divorce and children out of wedlock erodes societal values. We don't need more broken families! But I digress...
Save your money and don't buy this book (find a free copy). It does have some interesting original research but its conclusion and tone is jealous and pious. What the authors should be writing about is the whole scale ignorance and intentional dumbing down of our societal members. You know, the cheat that is the educational and political institutions, the Federal Reserve, etc.
In fact, I think it should be law that no one under the age of 21 (25?) should get married. And no one under the age of 30 should be granted a divorce (with exceptions, of course). Divorce and children out of wedlock erodes societal values. We don't need more broken families! But I digress...
Save your money and don't buy this book (find a free copy). It does have some interesting original research but its conclusion and tone is jealous and pious. What the authors should be writing about is the whole scale ignorance and intentional dumbing down of our societal members. You know, the cheat that is the educational and political institutions, the Federal Reserve, etc.
★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
janb
A complete reactionary stance from the flower-child generation (with baby bomber tendencies). Many of us have known for sometime that men are "no longer men" likewise, women are "no longer women". Genders roles have gone through some major changes since the fifties and now we see younger people delaying the "nuclear family" until later stages in life. AND GOOD FOR THEM! Society will not fall apart if younger people are delaying the serious commitment it takes to be selfless, for the sake of the spouse and children. As long as their choices are sincere and put them in a place they want to be and arent hurting others...who cares.
In fact, I think it should be law that no one under the age of 21 (25?) should get married. And no one under the age of 30 should be granted a divorce (with exceptions, of course). Divorce and children out of wedlock erodes societal values. We don't need more broken families! But I digress...
Save your money and don't buy this book (find a free copy). It does have some interesting original research but its conclusion and tone is jealous and pious. What the authors should be writing about is the whole scale ignorance and intentional dumbing down of our societal members. You know, the cheat that is the educational and political institutions, the Federal Reserve, etc.
In fact, I think it should be law that no one under the age of 21 (25?) should get married. And no one under the age of 30 should be granted a divorce (with exceptions, of course). Divorce and children out of wedlock erodes societal values. We don't need more broken families! But I digress...
Save your money and don't buy this book (find a free copy). It does have some interesting original research but its conclusion and tone is jealous and pious. What the authors should be writing about is the whole scale ignorance and intentional dumbing down of our societal members. You know, the cheat that is the educational and political institutions, the Federal Reserve, etc.
Please RateGuyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men
This book will illicit extremely negative male reactions for the same reasons it was written: this book challenges patriarchy and male privilege which will definitely cause many readers initial discomfort. While challenge and change are not comfortable, they can be ultimately rewarding.
Guyland offers a thoughtful sociological background to why (many, not all) boys and men act the way they do during this complicated stage of their life. You will despise this book if you believe that "misandry" is a cause for concern (since men are in power, or the Dominant Group, misandry is not relevant in the same way racism or anti-feminism are, since they are perpetrating non-dominant groups). Dr. Kimmel does not want to "hurt men's feelings" or make everybody hate men, as many other reviewers have alluded to: his aim is to alleviate the pressure many men will feel during their late teens to 20s, to offer alternatives to how they can live without falling into the stereotypical behaviors that cause them to suffer, sometimes causing others to suffer, unnecessarily.
Dr. Kimmel is not trying to mirror what proponents of the mainstream say everyday (we are not a postfeminist society: how do I know? Naysayers of this book truly believe that a book like this has the power to diminish masculinity, similarly to the beliefs held by people who believe pink nail polish will turn a little boy gay). In Guyland, Dr. Kimmel instead challenges the mainstream understanding of masculinity and urges men and women to be cognizant of the reasoning behind why guys' are involved in the all too popular phenomena of male-male bullying and hazing, male pack mentality, "hooking up," and rape (for those who are unaware, "One in four college women have survived rape or attempted rape" [...]).
This book will make males especially uncomfortable because it is asking for change and is not blindly accepting the status quo. The overall language Dr. Kimmel uses to describe men is sympathetic, despite what (arguably insecure) male posters have written: describing masculinity as functioning like a "straight-jacket" does not imply that men are inherently terrible and that they all ought to be ashamed that they were born with male anatomy, but rather the predominant understanding of masculinity is binding, oppressive, and damaging to both men and women.
I encourage men and women who want to read an alternative view on masculinity to read this book.
On the other hand, it will definitely be lost on those with little or no understanding of social issues, as they will simply have a knee-jerk mainstream reaction and not think about the possibility of change in society.