Customer Reviews

Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide

5 star:		(33)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(18)
2 star:		(28)
1 star:		(50)

 

 

Dowd is a fabulously sarcastic writer. When my opinion synches with hers, I revel in the deliciously wicked way that she expresses herself. It is a good laugh and the writing is truly unique. But when I don't agree, I find her style and opinions irritating and superficial, that is, unwilling to look beneath the surface in either a constructive or a genuinely insightful way. I suppose that is why she is a great columnist - you never have to get beyond about 800 words and you can forget her opinions as you step off the subway.

Well, this book in my opinion brings out the worst in her. She masses statistics about why so many talented women remain unattached, and makes an argument that it proves feminism has failed: because men basically want bimbos and women want to "trade up", the most interesting women (like, uh, her) get left without enduring relationships. Behind this funny and elegantly written argument, Dowd utterly fails to ask herself any of the harder questions that require introspection. Why can't she find a good relationship? Why do certain types of men approach her? Etc. It is not she who is deficient or somehow repellant to those who might love her, but men as a category and even society as a whole that come up short. This is OK for a pithy column, but in a book it wears awfully thin after the first chapter. Her lack of introspection is, well, depressingly relentless on such a personal subject. This is singularly unimpressive.

Moreover, what about all the talented women who DO find relationships that work? I am married to one of great talent and intelligence, who challenges me constantly and does not allow the marriage to stand still, even when it hurts. To have it any other way would be boring. My wife is, I think, an example of feminism as applied to married life and I dare not take anything for granted.

But my greatest disappointment in this book is that it posed no questions that got me to ask myself questions about who I am as a man and why I want what (or whom) I do. I learned nothing from this, even while I admired her writing style. There is more pose than substance and I don't believe this book is intended just for the humor.

Not recommended.

I'm a married professional woman and and consider myself a feminist, but I probably disliked this book as much as the angry males on here.

The book primarily a collection of stereotypes. There is an element of truth in some of these, but some of it is just wrong.

For example, Dowd states she would have had a better chance at being married if she had chosen a career as a maid. That's possible, but most likely in that case she'd probably be married to a janitor, not one of the high status males she seems to feel she deserves.

Maureen Dowd is the female equivalent of all those angry men who complain they aren't getting any because women are too focused on men with money...It's always easier to blame the outside world for your failures then look in the mirror.

She does have a point that "society" still values women primarily as sex objects, but men are not the only ones to blame for this either. A much, much better book on that subject is "Female Chauvanist Pigs".

I admit this book is entertaining, but don't give Ms. Dowd your money - buy it used.

Dowd has absolutely nothing useful or interesting to say. I think her book is summed up by the 'pink change purse' that she gave to a young friend that says 'BOYS ARE STUPID, THROW ROCKS AT THEM.' Leaving aside the utter obnoxiousness of this (think of an item of clothing that read 'Blacks are stupid, throw rocks at them', "Jews are stupid, etc.') the sentiment truly explains her problem. She wants to throw rocks at a certain group of people and thinks that in spite of this, they should be interested in or attracted to her (or women of her sort). Wake up and smell the coffee, Maureen! You don't need evolution to explain why you haven't been able to get married. Maybe men are dumb, as you endlessly say in this book, but they are sure smart enough to stay away from rock-throwing women. Ooof!

P.S. I am a female Yale graduate. I've been happily married for 23 years, so its not being smart that is the problem. I have three sons who I am raising to stay away from women like Maureen!

She uses a lot of well-articulated stereotypes. Even a 50's housewife would gag. She assumes that all men are superficial and are attracted to bimbos and that all women fill that role. She hates men but then desperately wants their approval. She wrote a chapter about how female heads of state are superior than male heads of state, then doesn't list a single female head of state. (FYI-Benazir Bhutto,Margaret Thatcher, Angel Merkel, etc).

She asks one or two of her friends their opinions on social patterns of men and women and then she tries to use it as a reliable statistic that explains everything. High school students can produce better data than that, as well as more coherent thesis'.

The only redeemable aspect of this abomination was her writing style. Insipid, hackneyed, prejudiced, but oddly witty. This book is like a more expensive and irritating version of Cosmo.

In this book, Maureen Dowd, the Queen Cobra of the NY Times Op-Ed staff, poses the question: "Are Men Necessary?" A more appropriate title for this book would be "What On Earth Happened to Feminism?"

Over the course of 352 pages, Dowd attempts to answer that question with a mix of sarcasm, sociology and personal anecdotes - seasoned with a generous helping of sexual gossip and raunchy humor. Topics in this chatty book range from dating, reproduction, and money to office politics, religion and her own lost hopes for a better society.

Dowd seems genuinely shocked at the decline of feminism as a cultural and political force. She's particularly disappointed in the television industry, which is somewhat surprising given the immense success of strong women like Oprah Winfrey, Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer and Meredith Viera.

Strangely enough, Dowd seems to accept men as basically selfish and predictable -- something to be endured and expected. Her outlook almost borders on fatalism. This can be funny at times, but it doesn't do much to advance her argument.

At turns funny and nasty, Maureen Down does a good job of focusing our attention on the unfinished gender wars still raging in America. Unfortunately, her insights are undercut by a tendency to wallow in sarcasm -- sometimes clever, often cliche. After a while, it's just not that funny -- or very enlightening. (Similar to her previous book, "Bushworld.")

[...]

Since this seems to be the subtext of the book Are Men Necessary, I think it should have been the title.

I read her excerpt from Are Men Necessary: "What's a Modern Girl To Do." I am giving it two stars because as a graphic designer, I like the 50s-style book cover illustration of the woman in the red dress reading a book in a subway train while the male passengers are watching her.

I am a single woman just like Maureen Dowd. But I think I know why she is having trouble dating.

She only goes out with rich, powerful men; usually celebrities, Republicrat or Demopublican politicians, and Beltway journalists sycophantic to them. These men probably really don't want a smart, talented woman. Why would they, when they're used to dating women who are just as shallow as themselves, and, if they're Beltway journalists, don't seem to dare criticize the Bush Administration like she does? For this very reason, her making fun of the Bushies and John Kerry in her columns probably alienates these men from her even further. I wouldn't be surprised if these very same men loathed Stephen Colbert and anonymously left death threats on his voicemail after he ranked on George Bush at the correspondents' dinner last April. Although her columns do sound bitchy and childish and no less superficial than her dates do; since these articles dwell on the politicians' personalities more than their policies.

I live in San Francisco, and do computer art and consulting for a living. I'm sure this requires more brain-power than writing a fluffy book complaining that men don't like smart women. I've been to Burning Man. I'm in the Green Party. Why am I mentioning these all-too-personal-and-irrelevant things? Because if these men don't want to date Maureen Dowd because she's too talented as she claims, they would probably not want to even think about dating a computer geek like myself. If she's really too smart for them, they'd consider me too much of a freak.

But I accept this. I guess it's much easier for me to not lose sleep over the fact that elite men are probably not going to like someone like me than it seems to be for Maureen Dowd. Because these men are not part of my world, but hers.

I'm not surprised she assumes that all men hate smart, talented women. It's because these are the only types of men she associates with. Fortunately, there are lots of decent, thoughtful, hard-working men out there who are not nearly this petty. But if she really wants to find them, she'll have to get out of her Hollywood-Beltway ghetto/ivory tower and into the real world.

To summarize, "What's a Modern Girl To Do" is nothing more than a sour-gripes-fest complaining that she can't get a rich, powerful man. Well, I can't either.

Maureen needs to hang out with a different crowd, like I do.

This book was selected because the title was provocative and I was interested to find out how the author was going to attempt to address this question: are men necessary? Admittedly, I have a jaundiced view of books of this ilk, they fall into the same category as 'Men are From Mars and Women are From Venus' - trite and clichéd. But I figured that this woman has journalistic standing and may offer some interesting insights or arguments. What seemed to be a collation of facts and observations brought together to address ideas of sexism and male/female power relationships became a mishmash of the author's personal experiences with anecdotes inserted in-between in an almighty journalistic mess. This book is for those with a taste for opinion pieces that don't really address issues with much depth. It was reminiscent of Christopher Hitchen's latest effort on the religion/science debate but gladly didn't descend into rant and derision. That is not to say this books wasn't an occupying read; the style is clear and readable. Merit that can be derived is an insider's view and some interesting facts about American politics. The author's insistence though on referring to her own life somewhat intruded into the piece and detracted from the work. Reading this book was like reading pseudo-intellectual newspaper or magazine editorials from end to end. So, the question in the title isn't deconstructed, it is prodded at, and then left unanswered. A light read, but not much light shed in the end.

I heard about this book on an internet radio show and decided to check it out.

Now I wish I hadn't.

From its cover title to the last page, the book is at best, an exercise in showcasing the skill of an experienced and clever writer. At worst, it is an ill-disguised, venomous, man-hating diatribe at a time when the world doesn't need more reasons for division and hatred.

Both men AND women need to face reality and admit that each gender has strengths and weaknesses that the other lacks, then take that understanding and figure out how to work together for a better society and a more peaceful world.

People like Maureen Dowd and others who enjoy and endorse her work, however, don't want that. All the pretty words and high ideals they use basically boil down to one simple sentence: Men are pigs.

This point of view completely ignores the fact that women are human too, and make just as many mistakes as men by virtue of that common, wonderful humanity.

Ms. Dowd's uncompromisingly negative view of all men is just as wrong, discriminatory and sexist as the obviously erroneous stereotype of women being nothing but vain, gold-digging nags.

Maybe the feminists, scientists and science fiction writers are correct. Perhaps we will see a future where men have become extinct or obsolete. Let us only hope, for the sake of our race's future harmony, that writers and thinkers of Ms. Dowd's ilk will precede them.

I am a great admirer of Maureen Dowd. Her column in the New York Times is the first thing I turn to after scanning the top stories. Her choice of language is always entertaining, and her insights into the psychological motives of public officials always add new dimensions to my understanding of the news. I was therefore rather distressed when her column disappeared for several months while she was on "book leave".

For anyone else who loves her column - rest assured that this book will not disappoint. Dowd is best when glib and entertaining, and most irritating when she affronts our closest held biases. Her critique of Bill Clinton's womanizing rankled my liberal prejudice, but eventually helped me realize how deeply it offended large segments of the public. This volume has large measures of that which will both amuse and challenge your sensibilities.

What has most perplexed me is how Dowd seems to fixate on the sexual aspects of our society, and in a way this book is her own exploration of that obsession. She admits in the very first line that she does not understand men - and even that she does not understand what she does not understand about them. While many might confess to this failing from either side of the sexual abyss, most would be content to live with their doubts and use ambiguity to cover up moments of uncertainty. Instead, Maureen Dowd attacks the eternal dance of equivocation head-on.

It is difficult to know exactly what playbook she is reading from when it comes to personal relationships. Her several accounts of misanthropic affairs and flirtations suggest that she sees courtship and romance less as the ritualized surrender to necessary emotions, and more as stylized machinations to seize the high ground, and while she might disparage "How to Catch and Hold a Man", one suspects that she read it attentively.

Dowd's basic thesis is that feminism's road, which she once believed to be a six-lane freeway, appears now to be a gated cul-de-sac. While it is hard to separate the serious criticism from the satire, it is clear that she thinks women have succumbed to playing out bimbo fantasies from popular culture. She ridicules the Harvard MBA's who trade their textbooks for miniskirts and cover up their academic successes to score a date.

Dowd is most relentless in her sarcastic attacks on men. While she clearly feels that they are congenitally unfit for public office, she also thinks that things might work out because the Y chromosome is disappearing and in a few hundred thousand years men will be history anyway. One hopes that there is some irony here, but it is apparent that she harbors a rather deep-seated resentment of males.

Despite its caustic witticism and public outrage, this struck me as a deeply personal book that Maureen Dowd wrote in an attempt to answer a question that haunts her even more than sexuality: "If I am so successful, why am I dissatisfied?"

Let's start with the title, and let's start with the obvious. If a man had written a book called Are Women Necessary? it would be denounced as misogynist literature and in all likelihood, never even get published. The implications of that title alone would be enough to derail it. It suggests that at best, women are useless and at worst, they should be rounded up and executed. There is nothing remotely funny about that, yet Ms. Dowd opens with an equally offensive title, expecting that both men and women will treat it as a joke. The subtext and the unstated joke is that it's okay to treat men like garbage because they're such pigs anyway. Sure, many men are, but I actually know men I like and respect. Painting an entire gender one ugly color is no way to start.

I read anyway, with the hope that there would be more substance and originality in the book, because Ms. Dowd's insights are otherwise often witty and direct. I hoped she would show she had more compassion than the title of the book implied. While she seems to respect truth, here Ms. Dowd only glues together anecdotes with sarcasm and asks the reader to endorse them. The result is entertaining at times, but a bit thin on the whole.

The real merit of the book is that it does identify some genuinely important issues. I wish she had given them more serious, objective treatment. Ms. Dowd is informed and intelligent and in my view, should not have excused herself from writing the more scholarly book she is clearly capable of. It is almost as though she is faintly saying "Don't take me so seriously, I'm just a girl." To answer the question posed by the title I find so grating, for women who enjoy offending men more than they enjoy understanding them, men had best not be necessary.