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Sunday, Nov 22, 2009
In her fat new investigation of male malaise, Susan Faludi finds the culprit in the culture.
Sep 30, 1999 | "I see Susan Faludi and I just want to punch her face in. Don't cut my dick off just because I'm a man," a young New Yorker named Gary Goldstein confessed to an Esquire writer several years ago, presumably bristling at the way the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist had depicted the resisters of feminism in her megaselling "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women." But take heart, Mr. Goldstein, wherever you are: Susan Faludi doesn't want to cut your dick off. In fact, she feels really bad about your dick (and we're speaking metaphorically here, you understand) because, apparently, while you stood braced through the '90s with your fists cocked, red-faced and ready to ward off any attack from Faludi and her banshee feminist ilk, somebody else cut your dick off.
But who? Ah, Mr. Goldstein, that's complicated. Still, you'll no doubt be happy to know that Susan Faludi (of all people) has provided you a far-ranging list of suspects in this, her second book, a walloping inquiry into the woes of modern manhood that looks poised to match the commercial and cultural success of her stellar debut. Among those Faludi hauls into her lineup: the faceless, grinding engines of corporate America; a not-
Faludi launches her coyly titled tome with a rock-hard premise: Something is wrong with men. To dispute that point, of course, would be to call down on your head a mammoth gush of evidentiary news clippings: rage-blinded shooting sprees, chest-beating retreats in the woods, Midwestern stadiums echoing with the twerpy sounds of weeping, vague-minded gatherings, et godawful cetera. Easy analysis of the situation has thus far yielded easy answers. One pinheaded theory dismisses men as atavistic brutes whose fluttering Y chromosome, whether obliged or resisted, leads them toward all manner of trouble. Another, just slightly more reasonable, blames feminism, which, in dethroning men (or attempting to), has left them a bunch of wobbly sad sacks, angry and uncertain about the new paradigm women are forcing upon them, and fearful, like Mr. Goldstein, that shiny knives are somewhere being sharpened.
Not so, Faludi maintains. Whatever's ailing men isn't a product of mere biology -- but neither does it stem from whatever ground feminists have gained. Instead, it's our very culture -- the giant, hazy, formless beast encompassing all those aforementioned suspects -- that's dealing men all the endless betrayals, losses and disillusionments that have incited them to shoot up day-care centers and file sniffling into stadiums. I suspect Faludi will glean all sorts of praise for this kinder, gentler and thus almost revolutionary theory of the gender divide -- for refusing to pin the blame for men's woes on men. And yet underlying this approach lies another, quieter evasion of blame. It's not your fault you feel like this, fellas, says Faludi -- but it's not our fault, either.
