Customer Reviews

Save the Males: Why Men Matter Why Women Should Care

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I came upon SAVE THE MALES at a local bookstore and found the idea of a woman writing a book in defense of men so novel that I bought it, and read it in one sitting. The book is basically a series of fast-paced, sometimes-hilarious essays that examine the way America has veered a little to the womanist side in education and popular culture, and how our men and boys have been short-changed in the process. I am a woman and have three daughters and was frankly surprised at how true Parker's argument rang. She isn't advocating the return of tribal patriarchy, but presents a dry, even-handed appraisal of a society that has become grid-locked in wrong thinking - thinking that one day might have a hugely negative impact on our country and our lives. The subtitle of the book reads: why women should care, and I have to honestly say that after reading the book, I really did care. Oh, and husband read it after me, and if he wrote a review, it would be ten stars...

I read a lot of contemporary non-fiction. Kathleen Parker's Save the Males stands out in a overcrowded field. With a light and clever hand, this southern lady works to save the males and Western Civ. "You'll laugh, you'll cry" may be a cliché but it's true here.

Save the Males has something for everyone. Young women will read Save the Males and have an appreciation for what their male contemporaries are up against. Mothers will read Save the Males and recognize a familiar story. Hardened feminists may read Save the Males and feel remorse. Men will appreciate that they're appreciated. Everyone should read, can read, and will enjoy reading Save the Males.

I read this book in two sittings. I could not put it down. Kathleen Parker comes out into the open and talks plainly regarding a phenomenon about which a great many American women are in denial: that over the past 40 years feminism and its evil twin political correctness have tweaked our culture in a decidedly anti-male direction. Lots of laughs for women who hate men, maybe, and as Kathleen herself told me, "a huge bonding agent for women."

Swell. But I have a message for all those "Jerry Maguire" American women out there who meet to congratulate each other on being women and to vilify men: we American men are beyond sick of it, and getting mad enough to fight back. You want that? Because here's the form that the "fighting back" will take: we'll go elsewhere to meet women. If despising us is how you puff yourselves up, who needs you?

That's a little blunt, but it needs saying. I'm an American man, and in a perfect world I would dearly love to value and honor the women of my own country. But I can't. Not now, anyway. Kathleen is absolutely correct: American women have made such a fetish of themselves, and of blaming men for all of their problems including those they bring upon themselves,that in recent years I have wondered why on earth American men should want to have anything to do with them. I'm married, so I don't have to worry about such things, (and yes, I am married to an American woman.) But I don't blame my fellow American men for going on the Internet and seeking female companions in Europe, South America or the Phillipines. I once adopted a cat who turned out to be so violently hostile to me that I returned it to its original owners. I wanted a companion, not a live-in enemy.

Kathleen is on-point and on-target when she makes it clear that American men want companions, not live-in enemies. And we're tired of being depicted on TV and in the movies as clueless dolts, incompetent bumblers, witless brutes and green-fanged rapists. It's no longer cute or funny, not that it ever was. Don't treat us with contempt and then expect us to call you for dates. And don't accuse us of seeking "submissive dewdrops" if we go seeking women who won't try to emasculate us in order to make themselves feel "liberated."

Kathleen told me that young women in America are her greatest hope. Because she sees among them, from what they say to her when she speaks on college campuses, a realization that our society has indeed become anti-male, and on the whole they're not comfortable with it. The "sisterhood" of the '60s and '70s, that baby-boomer generation of screechy feminists who took over the national conversation about gender relations about 40 years ago, is getting old. So is its radical message. Most of the original goals of 1960s feminism have long since been achieved. But the graying "sisterhood" has perpetuated male-bashing as a way of continuing to justify its existence (not to mention its government subsidies.) It's my hope that the upcoming generation of young women who weren't around when Robin Morgan and her ilk began spewing hate-men rhetoric, will manage to get things in this country back on an even keel. If I can't see that, I'd like to see a mass-migration of American men to Argentina or Madagascar or some other place where they aren't vilified and ridiculed everywhere they turn. I'll coordinate the effort if no other guy wants to. Let me know, guys. Let's leave these man-hating women to each other if needs be. Maybe that will send them a message.

Men and women need each other. And children need both parents. That's an idea that predates by perhaps 100,000 years the attempts by "the sisterhood" to create a unisex society, with the predictable by-product of skewing popular culture in such a way that women's self-obsessed whining becomes sacrosact, and men are always and everywhere The Villain. Equality is well and good; interchangeability is a radical feminist fantasy. Men and women are different. Period. Equal but different. Kathleen Parker's book should be dropped from airplanes by the thousands of copies all over this unwell land in which having a penis instead of a vagina is too often considered a social faux-pas that needs to be corrected.

In short, Kathleen is trying to re-introduce sanity to a society that has embraced this particular form of insanity and made it chic. I don't hold out a lot of hope, but I wish her all luck.

This was a very well-written, reasoned book about why men are important. Most importantly, without men, there are no women, and vice versa. Being opposite and different is what makes us important and worthwhile. This book helps lay out the case that our pornographic and male-phobic society has helped encourage men to believe that they are not useful in our society. The policies of our government and how we treat men in our advertisements, schools, and homes tells them they are not worthwhile and that they should be feared in many cases (no men can sit next to unaccompanied minors in Australia: are men really guilty by default? On college campuses faces of random [not guilty] students are plastered around campus as "potential rapists": are men rapists simply for being men?). These and many more stunning and depressing cases are laid out to show how prevalent and pervasive these opinions are, as well as how foolish they really are and the consequences of such mysandry.

One at a time. Women could help, and for their own good--and Kathleen Parker makes this abundantly clear--they should. But, in the end, if you're raised by a man-hating mother or you are a man in an environment deeply antagonistic to masculinity, it's still your job to be a man.

A great deal of this type of literature--Dr. Laura's The Proper Care and Feeding of Husbands, for example--understand the motivations of men and the negative influence a highly feminized culture can have on them, but often stop short of the ultimate truth: a man has to be a man. Much like happiness, manliness is an inside job. Wives and girlfriends and teachers don't emasculate men; men allow themselves to be emasculated. While modern feminized, anti-male culture will inevitably slow down the achievement of mature masculinity, at some point it is the adult male's responsibility to think, behave and live as a mature, masculine man.

40 year old frat boys--or, as many mature, masculine men refer to them: man-boys--are the direct product of an anti-male, highly feminized culture. An anti-male culture encourages misogyny, it does not alleviate it. Looking at men as serfs for the matriarchy--and, boy, does our culture encourage that--helps provoke man-boys to objectify women. The strategy of condemning and trying to eradicate manhood and "maleness" only serves to help create perpetually hypersexualized man-boys, or milquetoast, gender-neutral doormats who are as ultimately as unsatisfying to women as the lives they end up leading are to the men. And they still don't like to dust or put up the laundry.

As such, I give Save The Males top marks. This material is important--arguably more for mothers and women generally than men. But the message that men have an obligation to reach for and achieve their own masculinity, no matter what the women in their lives or the popular culture says, could be made a lot more forcefully. If you really want to save the males, the case should be made that it is the mature man's job to save himself.

As a reader from Spain, this book is a good warning on what is coming from the politically correct USA . Our "progressive" socialist government is importing all the failed policies inspired by radical feminist in the States. The result will be the same inequalities, with a Spanish accent, but happy brainwashed voters.

An excellent, very well-researched, informative, very readable must-read. Parker is to be commended for clearly demonstrating the fallacies of the politically correct ways in which male and female roles have been steered in recent decades. She brings much-needed sanity to this discussion, and she does it with a delightful wit that comes through on every page.

She is particularly effective in assessing the harmful way that the US Military has dealt with women. She points out exactly how the current use of women endangers both male and female soldiers and unit morale. (My discussions with my son, who served 27 months in Iraq, strongly support her conclusions.)

Save the Males also offers most valuable analyses of the current American family structure and of teen and young adult sexual activity. Her conclusions are searingly accurate, and are based not on dogma, but on the realities of what is good for society and what most definitely is not.

This is not, however, a negative book. Parker sees the honor, worth, and desirability of both the male and female as they truly are and should be. Despite the setbacks that males and females have suffered due to attempts at social engineering, Parker concludes with a well-charted course that we can follow.

Bravo to her for creating this excellent work.

John L. "Jay" Holcomb, Greenfield Center, NY
Former US Air Force Officer

This well researched and thought-out book puts the, "We don't like men and we don't need men" rhetoric of the feminist educators and mass media into a present day context. It's the latest snap shot of our society post modern feminism, and things are worse than ever.

Men won't or can't ever be victims of a social movement they supposedly perpetuated. What they want is simply to STOP BEING BLAMED and stop being forced to PRETEND women are the same as men just for the sake of keeping the hoochie door open at home. Instead we're told everywhere men and women are equal in all regards except women are given special privilages because they can give life, (or legally take it depending on the situation at that time).

It's very sad to me that this book will never come close to making the NY TIMES best seller list or here at Amazon. The author/publisher had to know that "You Shall Non Criticize Feminism" is commandment #1 in the Feminist Manifesto, but yet she bravely proceeded onward to write a terrific and worthwhile observation of the gender wars today. I can only hope that someday it becomes a classic as more confused men and thoughtful women seek answers to the question, "Why do we hate each other so much?". This book contains many of those answers.

Parker makes the case that cultural forces have combined to "form an anti-male mosaic that says to men and boys: We don't like you. We don't need you."

Her point is well taken. Can any society last long when the sex best fitted to defend, protect, and provide is held up for constant public ridicule?

Parker challenges us to grow up and start treating males like people-for the sake of our children.

Finally, someone with the courage to take on the PC crowd and radical feminism in their anti-male propaganda spree! No shrill name calling here, just reasonable arguments for the return of sane thinking in our culture.

It's tragic that those who have been abused by a man, or some men, feel the need to attack all men, rather than the specific ones who need it. Kathleen Parker calls us to rethink the wholesale lumping of men into the "bad" category.

Her argument against women in the miliary being anywhere near combat is worth the price of the book. She honors the sacrifice, courage, and patriotism of these women, while at the same time points out that this is one social experiment that needs to end.

She takes us past our own selfish interests, and points us to the picture of the world being created for our children, and their children, if we continue in this "man bad" track.

Well done.