What Women and Men Really Want: Creating Deeper Understanding and Love in Our Relationships [Paperback]

Aaron R. Kipnis (Author), Elizabeth Herron (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1882591240 | ISBN-13: 978-1882591244 | Publication Date: October 1995 | Edition: Rev Sub

What might you discover about male-female relationships if you took a mixed group into the wilderness to live together for several days and explore their gender differences? That's what authors Aaron Kipnis and Elizabeth Herron wanted to know. So they organized just such a trip. This book tells you what happened. As exciting as a fast-paced novel, WHAT WOMEN AND MEN REALLY WANT takes you along to the centre of their camp as the participants encounter runaway horses and a group of macho hunters . But when neat and well-ordered sociological norms collapse, unexpected harsh realities emerge. You will find this both an entertaining read and also a suggestion of how we can all enjoy more whole and fulfilling relationships.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Aaron Kipnis and Elizabeth Herron are pioneers in this culture, and we need them. In What Women and Men Really Want , they move into uncharted territory with grace and determination, and they wind upboth men and womenin a better place. I honor their work in gender reconciliation, and I hope we hear a lot more from them. -- Asa Baber, columnist for Playboy and author of Naked at Gender Gap.

Aaron Kipnis and Elizabeth Herron go beyond the problem to a possible solution: a ground breaking model for gender peace that might make it possible for men and women to quit blaming each other and start to truly get along. -- The Utne Reader

In its celebration of what's good about gender differences, this book deals a well-deserved blow to the battle between the sexes.. -- Susan Estrich, USC Law Professor and author of Real Rape.

Just as The Feminine Mystique heralded the women's movement and Iron John catalyzed the men's movement, so does What Women and Men Really Want, signal the beginning of a third great movement toward gender reconciliation. May both women and men heed the call! -- Mark Gerzon, author of A Choice of Heroes and Coming Into Our Own.

Kipnis and Herron walk us into the woods of male-female misunderstandings and prove to be gentle, thoughtful and balanced guides whose leadership will allow us to set up one camp with love rather than two camps of hate. -- Warren Farrell Ph.D. Author of The Myth of Male Power & Why Men Are The Way They Are

Many sensible things get said in this book . . . Kipnis and Herron take up different themes on popular distinctions between the genders . . . and offer a picture of what a complete or thoughtful men's movement would look like. -- Robert Bly, author of Iron John.

Provocative, exciting and immensely useful! This book is a rare gift. Where Backlash and The Myth of Male Power end, What Women and Men Really Want begins. With grace and the force of truth, it propels our culture into the healing phase of gender relationships. -- Michael Gurian, author of The Prince and the King and Mothers, Sons and Lovers.

This is a powerful, engaging work. Perceptive and useful, it is also graceful and lyrical. Herron and Kipnis have given a gift to us all. -- Ralph Blum, author of The Runes Book.

This is the book that tackles the topic for the 90's: friendship between the sexes. Male or female, you can only gain from its wisdom. -- Susan Deitz, nationally syndicated columnist and author of Single File.

From the Author

Elizabeth Herron, M.A. Elizabeth Herron is a trainer, consultant, and educator with over 20 years experience in the areas of male/female communications, women's psychology and gender reconciliation. She has taught Gender Diplomacy for universities, training institutes, business and government organizations including Purdue University, the U.S. Forest Service and Time Warner, Inc.

Elizabeth Herron directs the Gender Relations Institute in Santa Barbara, CA and is the co-author of the critically acclaimed book, What Women and Men Really Want. She is a regular guest on national radio and TV talk shows such as the Today Show, Donahue and CNN's Sonya Live. Her work has been featured in Reader's Digest, Personnel Journal, Workforce, Training Magazine, Woman, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Examiner and many other periodicals. Eliazbeth Herron is a contributor to various journals and book anthologies such as The Shadow In America, Good Will Towards Men and The Best of Utne Reader. She is currently writing a book entitled,Tending the Feminine Soul; Eight Steps to Healing the Hearts of Women. She conducts workshops nationwide on women's healing, creativity and personal transformation.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 208 pages
• Publisher: Nataraj Pub; Rev Sub edition (October 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1882591240
• ISBN-13: 978-1882591244
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,252,800 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you're interested in getting beyond the gender battle...., October 14, 1999

By 

Craig Chalquist, PhD, author of TERRAPSYCHOLO... (Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Women and Men Really Want: Creating Deeper Understanding and Love in Our Relationships (Paperback)

...this is a good place to start. Lots of useful and practical and insightful info about why women and men are they way we are--and without all the Mars and Venus stereotypical crap. The book proceeds through a series of discussions that occurred in a group conducted by the authors. Very readable. -- Craig Chalquist, M.S., creator of the Thineownself self-exploration site.

2.0 out of 5 stars rehash and fantasy, April 11, 2006

By 

Rion (Alameda, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: What Women and Men Really Want: Creating Deeper Understanding and Love in Our Relationships (Paperback)

I found this book to largely be a waste of time for me. I was referred to it and there were a large number of positive reviews at the time I bought it, so I proceeded to scan through it just in case. I have read other books about relationships (including John Gray's "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus") and found the book to be repetitive of well-known concepts and a bit naive.

Initially I was skeptical if the camping trip was reality or fabricated, and as the story wore on, it seemed that there were too many handy coincidents and all the dialogues sounded very edited, if not actually manufactured. I won't dwell on this since I have no proof. But the purpose of the camping trip is clearly to elicit comments from the men and women on the trip regarding their complaints of the opposite gender. I have heard all this stuff before numerous times and really didn't feel it was necessary to wade through the so-called camping trip for 220 pages when a concise summary would take just 20 pages.

When they finally got to the point of summarizing what the campers had said so far, and tried to make a conclusion out of it all, they were also answering the question the title poses. So there, on page 229, in a very brief paragraph, it says that men and women just want to be respected and have their needs met. Duh! There was no elaboration on this at all, in fact, the authors just sort of threw it on the ground and walked away like they didn't know what else to say.

The following chapters get much more into the authors' philosophies while still trying to maintain the camping trip atmosphere. They do this by starting each chapter with a bit of dialog from the campers, then launching into what they really want to cover. Such as ancient mythology regarding men and women, or other therpists' approaches.

Like I said, I just didn't learn anything new from this book and felt that it used a very roundabout way of making points with this camping trip. If you are the new to this topic and you like things to be dramatized in order to drive the points home, you might like the book.