Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (Paperback)

~ (Author) "WHEN I LISTEN TO THE SONS BORN after World War II, born to the fathers who won that war, I sometimes find myself in a..." (more)
Key Phrases: outplacement center, male utility, ornamental culture, Promise Keepers, Big Dawg, World War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Susan Faludi, author of the feminist bestseller Backlash, has done it again with an exhaustive report on the betrayals felt by working men throughout the United States. American men are angry and discontented, she argues in Stiffed, because their sense of what it is to be a man has been destroyed by everything from corporate downsizing and the shrinking military of the post cold war era to the increase in local sports teams leaving town. Whether she's interviewing the teenage male members of Southern California's infamous Spur Posse (who collected "points" for every female they had sex with), Cleveland football fans shaken by the departure of the Browns football team, militia movement activists, or Sylvester Stallone, Faludi seems stuck on the idea that American men today are man-boys, unable to completely grow up because they never received the nurturing they needed, and now constantly disappointed by life. Yet while many of the men Faludi interviews have real problems--bad luck and sad, troubled lives--somehow Stiffed still seems a bit whiny. Faludi's "travels through a postwar male realm" are a fascinating slice of male American life "under siege" at the end of the 20th century, even if she does finally leave us like the men she talked to--still wondering just what went wrong. --Linda Killian --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Publishers Weekly

While it offers nothing like the eloquent argument she made in Backlash, Faludi's examination of what she dubs the "masculinity crisis" does present a series of thoughtful interviews and fly-on-the wall journalistic excursions into the company of men. Faludi finds that American men are looking for metaphorical Viagra to cure an impotence beyond the literal kind. And sometimes, she argues, they are looking in the wrong places, becoming the proverbial "angry white males." Laid-off aerospace and naval shipyard workers, magazine editors and football fans, patriots and Promise Keepers are struggling to define manhood. Faludi aims wide in targeting the sources of the masculine malaise, citing everything from "the remote-control methods of a military-industrial economy" to "the feminization of an onrushing celebrity culture." Boomers and postboomers, deprived of the heroic status of their WWII veteran dads and having had their sense of virtue eroded by the chastisements of feminism, are trying to find "a route to manhood through the looking glass." As Faludi exhaustively documents the struggles of incredible shrinking men with the "post-cold-war restructuring of the economy," she suggests that the core of the problem is that men have lost "a useful role in public life, a way of earning a decent and reliable living, appreciation in the home, respectful treatment in the culture." Faludi concludes by exhorting men to stop thinking of masculinity as a quality detached from their humanity: "their task is not, in the end, to figure out how to be masculineArather, their masculinity lies in figuring out how to be human." This admonitionAbe a mensch!Ais a sensible way to close a book that proceeds less by well-shaped argument than by the accumulation of anecdotes and Faludi's intelligent, interpretive forays into the lives of men. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 672 pages
• Publisher: Harper Perennial (September 19, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0380720450
• ISBN-13: 978-0380720453
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (116 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #251,099 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Strong on narrative; weak on analysis, December 9, 1999

By	W. F. Gray (Cumberland, KY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (Hardcover)

Susan Faludi is an excellent reporter, and her book is very readable. The quality of the chapters varies. I found the chapter on laid-off workers in California to be very compassionate and forthright. Other chapters spend a great deal of time on men who are really at the fringes of American masculinity, and the tone can me one of mocking sometimes. Not that the mocking is not sometimes deserved, but you have to wonder how a woman could write a 600+ page book about the powerless of the American male and not include anything about divorced fathers or men employed in dangerous occupations. Where is the mainstream?

Most of the time, while the narrative is interesting, Ms. Faludi goes off track when she tries to fit her stories into a pattern. Occasional true insights are lost in a general pattern of blaming everything on "the fathers." It is essentially a boomer book, written from a perspective all too common in my generation--that we are victims of the failures of the previous generation. It is a pity that this comes along at a time when my generation is actually learning to give that generation some credit for bringing us through the Depression and World War II.

It is also interesting that someone writing about the powerlessness of American men should have lambasted other authors who have had similar points of view, such as Warren Farrell, in her earlier book BACKLASH, and apparently sees no change in perspective between the two. Most American men, like most American women, do not want to think of themselves, and do not want to be thought of by others, as victims. But Faludi does a good job of exploring the fact that most of the worst of male behavior springs not from male power, but the lack of it (the book grew from the point when a light bulb went on over her head while meeting with a group of male abusers, and she realized that it was the lack of power that was the source of their behavior).

It's worth reading, but I would borrow it from a library to avoid its cost, and I would feel free to skip certain sections. The chapter on Vietnam vets is slanderous to the group, and other sections (e.g. the making of Rambo) are just a waste of time.

Although our observations are sometimes way off base, it is good to see Faludi writing on men and making the effort to understand us, given the slant of her previous writing. Still, I wish she had seen fit to deal with some more typical men, their more typical problems and ways of dealing with them. To judge American men by those who populate most of Faludi's pages is like judging Mexico by Tijuana.

49 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Feminism or Humanism?, January 25, 2000

By	Allen Smalling "Constant Reader," (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (Hardcover)

I read Faludi's "Stiffed" more out of duty than desire (I'm a bug for gender issues). I liked it more than I thought I would, but I could recommend it more wholeheartedly if it were about 200 pages shorter. I have to commend her on her research, though--she gets to known men as diverse as inner-city "gangstas," laid-off aviation executives, Spur Posse members, Promise Keepers and shipyard workers.

Faludi's thesis is that present-day American men have been sold a bill of goods--"stiffed"--denied the opportunity to fulfill their true masculinity. Clearly she's on to something, or else why would the yearning for father be so strong, as expressed by youth gangs, Iron John, Robert Bly, and the Promise Keepers? Faludi locates the great betrayal historically (but a tad mystically) in the dislocations of the cold war, which forced our fathers into regimented, frequently overblown or meaningless work--and, as distasteful as that might be, such makework started to disappear through layoffs and downsizing just when the Baby Boomers started to claim what they thought was their rightful inheritance. In essence she is saying that American men, regardless of socioeconomic standing, have become a throwaway generation.

Faludi's writing style is delightful and her sympathy is obvious. She does hymn the despair for too long, though, and she might have clued us in on how some men avoided getting stiffed (or is EVERY American man a tragedy? ). Faludi came to her analysis as a feminist, presumably from the political left--yet much of what she says was anticipated 20 years ago by neoconservative Christopher Lasch in "The Culture of Narcissism," when he opined that most modern Americans don't get the opportunity to do truly meaningful work. His conclusion was the same as hers--resulting in the kind of futility that he calls "narcissistic" and she calls "ornamental." "Stiffed" is an important book, not a seminal work like "The Feminine Mystique" or even "Iron John" but nonetheless a book that people will talk about. It is a feminist book, but also a humanist book, and her sympathy is welcome.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Now men as well as women are victims of masculinity, March 27, 2000

By	Tom Edwards (Chicago) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (Hardcover)

Susan Faludi Stiffed

Susan Faludi rose to fame with thepublication of "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women inAmerica" which won the 1992 national book critics Circle Award. She has now turned her attention to the other side of the sex war with the publication of her new book "Stiffed, The Betrayal of the American Man". Contrary to the allusion of the title, this champion of feminism has not defected to the side of patriarchy - her thesis is that men as well as women are victims of masculinity.

Stiffed is a 608 page journey through the various personal crises of many different groups of men. The book is light on facts and statistics and takes the form of a narrative through Faludi's numerous interviews. The underlying theme that unifies these many disparate groups of men is that they find themselves betrayed by the modern world and are unable to play the masculine roles that society has conditioned them to play. This has resulted in a profound crisis for these men.

According to Faludi this crisis is caused by the inability of modern American men to live up to the masculine role models created by their War Generation fathers. She contends that the War Generation returned triumphantly from the Second World War to become the male providers of the 1950s boom, standing confidently in their role as the breadwinners for their families. Modern men have been left trying to fill the footprints of these fathers while changes in the economy and the rise of feminism have destroyed the old post-war world. Modern man has subsequently become a victim of his own previous identity.

Faludi has cleverly selected subjects that fit her case - troubled teenagers, anachronistic Cold War warriors, and failed middle aged men. Strangely absent are any interviews of men with healthy ambitions, happy marriages, or successful careers. It is thus not surprising that she concludes her "modern man" to be an absolute failure. Furthermore, this pathetic image of modern man has been accepted as good coin by many pundits on both sides of the Atlantic and is a testament to how many commentators share her outlook and are questioning masculine values. From the front page of Newsweek to being serialized in the British press, Stiffed looks set to win as much acclaim as Backlash.

Faludi is right to identify the end of the post-war political order as leading to the current questioning of masculinity. However, she incorrectly ascribes this doubt to communication problems between father, son, man and woman...

In addition to miscommunication, Faludi throws in globalization as the major material change underlying the masculinity crisis, yet she never explains why this problem at the economic level should have led to a breakdown of male identity. She ignores the fact that the very men she sees as archetypal patriarchs, the War Generation, were themselves the product of a far more significant economic dislocation during the Depression. Faludi does not explain why when faced with the problems caused by globalization "modern men" have spiraled into a crisis of self doubt and uncertainty, while their forefathers sought solutions to their economic woes.

Faludi does not offer many solutions to her lost boys. She simply thinks that they should recognize that the models they are trying to follow are out of date, that they will not be able to control things or be the providers and voices of authority in family life and should move on to other things. (Of these other things she makes no comment.)... END