Customer Reviews

Rites of Man

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I am researching the causes of sexism. Much of what I have read has been polemics or tracts. Three books (so far) are exceptions to this: The Gender Knot by Johnson, Proving Manhood by Beneke, and (now) The Rites of Man by Miles. I wanted to understand how sexism happened -- how people (men and women) came to hold those beliefs. I still do not understand the "internalized sexism" of women, but I do feel that I understand how this comes about in men, thanks to Miles' brilliant book. And this understanding was painful, very very painful. But I am incredibly grateful to have learned what I now know, for any attempts at fixing this must begin with an understanding of the causes.

Recently a man (Anders Brevivik) killed 77 people in a terrorist attack. Breivik is Norwegian, as were his victims. He listed as a cause the feminization of Europe and responded to that with violence. Miles book (published in 1992) provides countless examples of how men could react with such violence to a perceived decay in patriarchal values: they were themselves acclimated to those values via psychological and physical violence. It is the language they speak, and the decay of those values causes extreme emotional pain.

So I now "get it", at least with regard to men. It remains for me to discover why women concur with sexism (when they do -- not all men are sexist, just as not all women oppose sexism.)

Rosiland Miles' summary of the acculturation of western men is grim but full of insight. From circumcision (English, she seems unaware that most US men are circumcised and looks only at the ritual) to bullying, abuse, ritualised fighting, gay-bashing, sexual performance and its anxiety, romantic myths and loveless marriage, remoteness from his children, suicide, murdering and being murdered, to impotence and premature death, western man has a hard time. But this is not a blaming book, and men as well as well as women will be able to read it with tragic recognition and compassion. She does at last offer some solutions, but in little detail and without any apparent conviction.