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Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man Paperback – September 19, 2000
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This 20th-anniversary edition of the extraordinary New York Times bestseller features a new introduction from the author!
"Stiffed is a brilliant, important book.. Faludi's reportorial and literary skills unfold with breathtaking confidence and beauty... She goes a long way toward eliminating the black and white, good and evil, male and female polarities that have riven the sexes in the past three decades..." –Time
In 1991, internationally renowned feminist journalist Susan Faludi ignited a revival of the women’s movement with her revelatory investigative reportage: Backlash was nothing less than a landmark, uncovering an “undeclared war” against women’s equality in the media, advertising, Hollywood, the workplace, and government—a war that is still being fought today.
Stiffed may be even more essential than Backlash to understanding the cultural riptides that led to Trumpian America. Here, Faludi turns her attention to the so-called “Angry Male” politics plaguing the nation. Through deeply researched, nuanced, and empathetic character studies of distressed industrial workers, laid-off aerospace engineers, combat veterans, football fans, evangelical husbands, suburban and inner-city teenage boys, and Hollywood and porn actors, Stiffed goes beyond the easy explanations of male misbehavior—that it’s driven by chromosomes or hormones—to lay bare the powerful social and economic forces that have shattered the postwar compact defining American manhood. Faludi’s vivid storytelling illuminates the historic and traumatic paradigm shift from a “utilitarian” manliness, grounded in civic and communal service, to an “ornamental” masculinity shaped by entertainment, marketing, and performance values.
Read in the light of Trumpian politics and the #MeToo movement, Faludi’s analysis speaks acutely to our present crisis, and to a foreboding future. Stiffed delivers a searing portrait of modern-day male America, and traces the provenance of a gender war that continues to rage, unabated.
- Print length672 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherWilliam Morrow Paperbacks
- Publication dateSeptember 19, 2000
- Dimensions5.31 x 1.34 x 8 inches
- ISBN-100380720450
- ISBN-13978-0380720453
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“A groundbreaking, 600 page treatise that shines feminism’s insights into various corners of masculinity in a way that hasn’t been done before . . . Stiffed is eye-opening enough to change the way we understand each day’s news.” — Boston Sunday Globe
“Faludi masterfully weaves larger essays with case histories and personality profiles. She connects the general to the specific and enlivens her argument with a host of haunted voices.” — Washington Post Book World
“Susan Faludi’s Backlash . . .[is] the most important book on women in recent decades . . . Stiffed is even better than Backlash. It is a significant and serious work.” — New York Review of Books
“The worst thing about Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man is that you immediately want to run around grabbing people by the lapels and beseeching them, “Read this book! Now! I’ve got to talk about it . . . ” — San Diego Union Tribune
“[Susan Faludi’s] ear knows how to listen; her heart is made of sympathy; her mind is always changing... Brilliant book. ” — John Leonard, New York Newsday
“In this monumental and surprising book, sure to make a tremendous impact on thoughtful people, [Faludi] overlooks no part of the national landscape . . . As in her Pulitzer-Prize-winning Backlash, Faludi accuses society, and documents her claims. Read Stiffed. You’ll never forget it.” — Harriete Behringer
“[Stiffed] is the product of six years of aggressive reporting and an admirable knack for bringing the results to life. No one will ever put this book down for lack of vivid scene setting or compassionate observation.” — The New York Times Book Review
“[Stiffed is] a work of astonishing compassion . . . It issues a dare for both men and women who’ve long been dunned into passivity to do something significant to change their lives, to reject the values of a society that would prefer for them to seek easy answers.” — Seattle Weekly
From the Back Cover
One of the most talked-about books of last year, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Backlash now explores the collapse of traditional masculinity that has left men feeling betrayed. With Backlash in 1991, Susan Faludi broke new ground when she put her finger directly on the problem bedeviling women, and the light of recognition dawned on millions of her readers: what's making women miserable isn't something they're doing to themselves in the name of independence. It's something our society is doing to women. The book was nothing less than a landmark. Now in Stiffed, the author turns her attention to the masculinity crisis plaguing our culture at the end of the '90s, an era of massive layoffs, "Angry White Male" politics, and Million Man marches. As much as the culture wants to proclaim that men are made miserable--or brutal or violent or irresponsible--by their inner nature and their hormones, Faludi finds that even in the world they supposedly own and run, men are at the mercy of cultural forces that disfigure their lives and destroy their chance at happiness. As traditional masculinity continues to collapse, the once-valued male attributes of craft, loyalty, and social utility are no longer honored, much less rewarded. Faludi's journey through the modern masculine landscape takes her into the lives of individual men whose accounts reveal the heart of the male dilemma. Stiffed brings us into the world of industrial workers, sports fans, combat veterans, evangelical husbands, militiamen, astronauts, and troubled "bad" boys--whose sense that they've lost their skills, jobs, civic roles, wives, teams, and a secure future is only one symptom of a larger and historic betrayal.
About the Author
Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and the author of Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, which won the 1992 National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction. A contributing editor for Newsweek and a former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has written for many magazines, including The New Yorker, The New York Times, Esquire, Double Take, and The Nation. She lives in Los Angeles.
Product details
- Publisher : William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (September 19, 2000)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 672 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0380720450
- ISBN-13 : 978-0380720453
- Item Weight : 1.28 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.31 x 1.34 x 8 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,611,260 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,154 in Men's Gender Studies
- #3,108 in Feminist Theory (Books)
- #3,531 in General Gender Studies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Susan Faludi won the Pulitzer Prize in 1991 for excellence in journalism and won the National Book Critics Circle’s nonfiction award for Backlash upon its original publication. She is also the author of The Terror Dream, Stiffed, and In the Darkroom, a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in biography. A former reporter for The Wall Street Journal, she has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper’s, and The Baffler, among other publications.
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This book made me think and appreciate all that men have done for our country and for the sake of family.
Like _Backlash_, _Stiffed_ says a lot of things that people don't want to hear. Unlike _Backlash_, the more recent book isn't afraid to put the blame on consumer culture. That fact is missed by virtually every negative reviewer -- yet having actually read the book, I find it hard to understand how. Reading _Backlash_ was sometimes maddening for her refusal (and it did smack of refusal) to name a culprit; that weakness is gone in _Stiffed_.
Yet still these negative reviews, most of them dismissive ("the most overrated journalist of the '90s...") in character, without any substantive criticism, proliferate. There's something here that people are afraid to hear. That makes it important for thinking people to read.
Random thoughts: 1) Faludi's conclusion is that most American men are unhappy (and resistant to feminism) because their fathers - those heroes of World War II and members of the "greatest generation" - were cold, distant, and silent parents, providing little or no guidance to boys growing up in a consumer culture that rewards image over true worth. I'm sure there is some truth to this theory. But what about all of the mothers - do they make no impact on their sons? Other than in passing, Faludi makes no mention of the mothers.
2) Feminism, like motherhood, gets a pass from Faludi as a contributing factor to modern male distress. Men who criticize any aspect of the women's movement are unreasonable, delusional, or scapegoating. Yet I was struck by this assessment of feminism by one of the men Faludi interviewed: "It doesn't seem to have made anyone very happy."
3) I'm not convinced that the average American male is quite as tormented as Faludi would have us believe. But a 600-page volume of interviews with men who are basically happy and content would be an awfully dull read.
4) Faludi's final words of advice to men who are unhappy or confused by our Brave New World? "Wage a battle against no enemy." Great. That helps.





