Book Description
An intensive, Bible-based treatment for those who suffer from gender identity problems.
Customer Reviews:
A vital book for our generation.......2006-06-25
Leanne Payne's book is a vital message for our confused generation. She tells the story of several men whose lives have been affected by their lack of a strong inner sense of masculine identity. By listening to God and coming into His healing presence, each of them was freed to recognise their own manhood, and to accept it.
We live in an age where divergent sexual "identities" are promulgated as solutions to people's inner crises. Yet the truth each of us needs is that God is our Father. Everyone of us is feminine in comparison with the strong masculinity of God. Yet also, each man among us derives his identity as a man from God and each woman also derives her sense of femininity from the Father. When God created Adam, he was both male and female, and God drew Eve from within Adam. So God is "the One from whom all Fatherhood derives its name".
Homosexuality and lesbianism are conditions men and women find themselves in, but they are not the will of God. They are, like all of us, in urgent need of the healing presence of God. There is no room for judgment of one by another. All of us shrink in one degree or another from healing, and need it so much. I am refreshed by the courage and honesty of Ms Payne in stating, against the potential wrath of the current world system, that heterosexuality is God's true pattern for humanity. To relinquish the fight for truth and to fail to offer a healing alternative to people struggling for freedom is - as Ms Payne writes elsewhere - to abandon people to "the dark demons in the blood".
The above is my personal reading of, and reaction to, Crisis in Masculinity.
Affirmation of the male role model.......2004-03-15
I found this very interesting and got a whole new insight on homosexuality. The male role models were not there during the time that the male children needed to be affirmed by their human father.
Crisis In Psychology.......2004-03-11
Read this book if you are seeking to solidify an unhealthy perspective on homosexuality. This book IS NOT FOR ME! Reading this takes me back to a time in my life when Catholic guilt had me caged in.
Leanne Payne mixes up her theories with religious passive aggressive judgment as much as possible. As a gay person, repressive interpretations of the Bible have never worked for me. Repression and calling gay sexuality a sin (or coming from "darkness" as she puts it) causes people to feel less than and to be hard on themselves and make decisions about their lives from that place. Acceptance is the healthiest solution towards a healthy lifestyle, which is what we all want.
Someone needs to come up with another book that studies the world's "crisis in masculinity", I do believe that it is an important subject to study, especially with how many gay/bisexual people there are these days. Something is happening that we definitely need to pay attention to. But, Leanne Payne is all over the place and her arguments are very simple minded and slanted in a Biblical manor. I think that her book should better be called "Crisis in Psychology", because it is obvious that is what she is experiencing as she straddles the tracks between vast human psychology and that of strict religious belief.
Incidentally, for all your gay people out there who are struggling with religious upbringings, you have got to realize that there is more to life than your religion you have been brought up with. A lot of the ideas that you have learned are not exactly correct. God doesn't necessarily want you to go to hell. Anyway, not to go off about it, but, there is an entire world of religion/spiritual methods out there; they are all talking about and trying to translate the same idea of God and spirituality and our place in the world.
So, if you don't fit into your Christian/Catholic guilt-oriented religion, try another one (buddhism is really awesome!) You aren't going to go to hell for studying about another religious belief, what do you think Priests do when they are studying at the seminary?
After years of growth, my spirituality doesn't relate or agree with Leanne Payne's and I'm a pretty spiritual person (believe it or not, I was an alter boy for the Pope in 1987 in Carmel, CA.) Find your spirituality from a place of no guilt, learn to purely love yourself as a child of the light of God. Don't pay attention to any attempts to hold you down in a cage of interpretation and punishment. Interpret your own spiritual being, but let yourself be free to be who you are, God loves you just as you are, BELIEVE ME.
If you question your sexuality, then question it, but don't question because someone told you that God has a problem with it. Homosexuality is as natural as heterosexuality, and don't let anyone tell you differently. Take a step right now towards the freedom to be yourself and to create your own relationship between God and your sexuality. Be real, this book is repressive and unauthentic.
Could we achieve the same with NLP?.......2003-08-06
(Some qualifiers/context: I am male, not gay, ambivalent about religion and otherwise reasonably "normal").
I read the book trying to discount the strong Christian slant. What interested me most about the book is that the author effectively uses (currently) established NLP techniques during her sessions. Note that at the time of writing (1985) NLP was still in its infancy.
The methods described use Jesus Christ as the primary resource in resolving issues about self-concept. This should be quite effective with Christians.
The question is whether much the same could be achieved by the direct use of the appropriate NLP techniques. This will probably be much more acceptable to people who are less religious.
No thank you........2003-04-06
While Ms. Payne is an icon in the ex-gay community, I have a real problem with the idea of a woman writing about masculinity. The very fact that she is a woman makes her uniquely unqualified to write on this subject just as men are uniquely unqualified to write a similar book about femininity. Instead of this book, there are several books written by men that I could recommend, such as Alan Medinger's Growth Into Manhood and Gene Getz's The Measure of a Man.
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- A Crisis in Explanation
- Fine scholarly document but lugubriously written
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Male Trouble: A Crisis in Representation
Abigail Solomon-Godeau
Manufacturer: Thames & Hudson
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The Body in Pieces: The Fragment as a Metaphor of Modernity
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The Female Nude
ASIN: 0500017654 |
Book Description
Why did the male nude become an object of spectacle and erotic display in French painting and sculpture in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries? And why have art historians turned a blind eye to the "crisis" at this historical turning point in the representation of masculinity, away from idealized models to that of androgynous and feminized male nudes? Why was the male nude later eclipsed in art by the female nude? In this pioneering and compelling book, the author explores how the beautiful male body dominated neoclassical visual culture, and why it spoke so powerfully to male spectators. Whether in the guise of virile heroes or languishing adolescents, in both familiar and now-obscure works of art, the imagery of ideal masculinity raises important questions about the fashioning of masculinity itself, as evident in contemporary mass culture as in the elite culture of the past. Drawing on feminist, psychoanalytic, and critical theory, as well as art and cultural history, Solomon-Godeau proposes a radical reassessment of neoclassical visual culture.
Customer Reviews:
A Crisis in Explanation.......2007-05-30
I suspect that buried somewhere in these 264 pages of largely unreadable prose is a rather interesting 20 page essay. I'll confess that I gave up trying to find it about halfway through the book. The insights offered simply weren't worth filtering through the difficult writing style. For a wider-ranging and more readable book, I recommend THE NUDE MALE: A NEW PERSPECTIVE by Margaret Walters.
Fine scholarly document but lugubriously written.......2001-08-16
Abigail Solomon-Godeau is clearly a bright and well researched scholar. She takes on the strange task of examining the evolving appearance of the male nude from virile to fey in paintings at the close of the 18th century and into the 19th century and finds in this path of thinking some fascinating insights into the core of feminism. Her premises are sound, her arguments are strong. She has devoted much time and skill into opening the door on a problem that continues to vex us - why are we so terrified to paint the frontal male nude now? Her book slowly unfolds a well documented, well illustrated exploration of why the French Revolution and its aftermath gave impetus to the feminist movement and why, in turn, the male nudes in the paintings of the previous centuries were feminized and subsequenty replaced by female nudes.....a situation that persists into 2001. My only reservations with this book is that it reads so slowly, due to the style of writing. As a Doctoral Thesis this might be expected. But for the art reader it is hellish work wading through much of the verbiage. But, stick to it and you will be handsomely rewarded in the end. This is one very bright lady who has added considerably to a festering question in representational art.
Book Description
Whereas many of the men of Reagan's '80s seemed stereotypically hypermasculine, a host of '90s images suggest a new phase of more sensitive manhood. In the Clinton era, both academic and popular writers suggested that a "crisis of masculinity" had taken root—one that had men questioning traditional male ideas and seeking new identities. This book explores the conflicted ways in which this seemingly new climate of masculinity was negotiated. From Bill Clinton to The Promise Keepers and Titanic to Friends, a host of '90s heroes put this rhetoric of crisis to work to win elections, audience members, and ratings.
Customer Reviews:
Insightful and enjoyable - a rare gem........2006-02-10
Academic by nature, this book ran the risk of reading like a doctoral dissertation. However, Malin cleverly sidesteps that trap by infusing his work with humor and insight into the relationship between modern man and popular culture. The result is a piece worthy of scholarly recognition, yet accessible to everyone. A true rarity.
Book Description
In 1894, French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew, was wrongly accused of passing military secrets to the Germans. The ensuing scandal has often been studied for what it reveals about French anti-Semitism and tensions between republicanism and conservatism under the Third Republic. But because treason was considered a cowardly--and therefore effeminate--act, Dreyfus also embodied, for many, the danger of effeminate men masquerading in military uniform.
In The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood historian Christopher E. Forth shows how the rhetoric and images used during the Dreyfus Affair reflected French anxieties about masculinity and modernity, and also facilitated ongoing debates about the state of French manhood through the First World War. Forth first considers the broad gender issues that faced the French at the time of the Dreyfus trial. He examines contemporary newspaper accounts as critiques of the masculine credentials of Jewish men and shows how members of the Jewish press answered allegations of their own cowardice and effeminacy. By situating the figure of the "intellectual" within the gender anxieties of the time, he shows how Dreyfus's supporters defensively tried to affirm their masculinity by distancing themselves from "cowardly" Jews, "hysterical" crowds, and threatening women. This book pays special attention to how the Dreyfus Affair engaged with changing ideals of the male body. Taking as a metaphor the portly body of Dreyfus's most prominent defender, novelist Émile Zola, Forth explores how an emerging emphasis on diet and exercise allowed supporters to celebrate Zola's "heroic" weight loss. Finally, he examines the relation of the Dreyfus Affair to the "culture of force" that marked French society during the prewar years, thus accounting for the rise of the youthful athlete as a more compelling manly ideal than the bookish and sedentary intellectual.
Customer Reviews:
an excellent book that will frustrate many.......2004-07-01
Forth examines how gender politics in fin-de-siecle France affected the Dreyfusard Affair and its key actors. This book not only brings up gender matters, but Jewish identity, obesity, intellectualism, the birth rate, among others.
The reader can instantly tell that the author had to read much information in order to come up with his thorough and concise descriptions. I am always frustrated that historians haven't picked up many of the important contributions from cultural studies. This book, however, was a good mix of history, Jewish studies, and gender studies.
This book brings up fascinating phenomena. For example, the author stated that stereotypes of French Jewish men as less manly were so pervasive that to call a Jewish man "unmanly" could automatically be understood as both patriarchal and anti-Semitic. Male Dreyfusards considered themselves the saviors of a female Truth, yet discouraged actual women from being too vocal in support of their cause.
This book will make you think about modern problems. Articles say that anti-Semitism is on the rise in France just as in the 1890s. Modern Americans worry about sedentary, middle-class jobs just as the French did more than a century ago.
Despite being impressed with this book, I know that it will frustrate many. The author freely admits that he does not solve whether Dreyfus committed treason or not and that his focus is upon the undercurrents of the debate. Still, social conditions in France are covered more than the Dreyfus Affair. Dreyfusards are analyzed more so than Dreyfus himself. Non-Jewish thinkers are discussed more than Jewish ones. This book goes into descriptions of physique magazines and urban crowds way afield of the main discussion. Each chapter foreshadows a talk about French author Emile Zola and then in the Zola chapter, the author is only brought up in a few pages. The remoteness of Forth's discussion is going to frustrate many readers. This will only reaffirm ideas that historians shouldn't dabble into gender matters and other sociocultural issues.
Book Description
Challenging widely held assumptions about postwar gay male culture and politics, Homosexuality in Cold War America examines how gay men in the 1950s resisted pressures to remain in the closet. Robert J. Corber argues that a form of gay male identity emerged in the 1950s that simultaneously drew on and transcended left-wing opposition to the Cold War cultural and political consensus. Combining readings of novels, plays, and films of the period with historical research into the national security state, the growth of the suburbs, and postwar consumer culture, Corber examines how gay men resisted the "organization man" model of masculinity that rose to dominance in the wake of World War II.
By exploring the representation of gay men in film noir, Corber suggests that even as this Hollywood genre reinforced homophobic stereotypes, it legitimized the gay male "gaze." He emphasizes how film noir’s introduction of homosexual characters countered the national "project" to render gay men invisible, and marked a deep subversion of the Cold War mentality. Corber then considers the work of gay male writers Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and James Baldwin, demonstrating how these authors declined to represent homosexuality as a discrete subculture and instead promoted a model of political solidarity rooted in the shared experience of oppression. Homosexuality in Cold War America reveals that the ideological critique of the dominant culture made by gay male authors of the 1950s laid the foundation for the gay liberation movement of the following decade.
Customer Reviews:
Images of Masculinity in the Early-Cold War.......2000-08-20
Robert Corber, who has taught in the American Studies and Gay and Lesbian Studies programs at Trinity College here in Hartford, examines works by Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, and James Baldwin in order "to try to establish the importance of a group of gay male writers whose cultural politics have been misunderstood." Corber's main premise is that a post-World War II "crisis of masculinity" produced, in the1950s, a model of masculinity stressing domesticity and cooperation which gradually became hegemonic. Corber explains that "the successful negotiation of the corporate hierarchy depended less on personal ambition and personal initiative than on respect for authority, loyalty to one's superiors, and the ability to get along with others - all qualities traditionally associated with femininity."
Corber first provides a lengthy, incisive discussion of film noir, the genre of gritty detective stories popular in this era. According to Corber: "Inspired by the hard-boiled detective novels of Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, and Cornell Woolrich," film noir presented a "pessimistic view of American society." In particular interest, according to Corber "postwar film in general tended to ratify the homophobic categories of Cold War political discourse. The discources of national security tried to exploit fears that there was no way to tell homosexuals from heterosexuals." Corber explains: "The possibility that gay men could escape detection by passing as straight linked them in the Cold War political imaginary to the Communists who were allegedly conspiring to overthrow the government." As a result, in Corber's view: "The unusual presence in film noir of characters who are explicitly identified as gay can be attributed to male homosexual panic." The early-Cold War popularity of film noir, according to Corber, indicates that the American public accepted the genre's sexual politics. According to Corber, "the hard-boiled detective's refusal to participate in the traditionally female spheres of domesticity and consumption is expressed visually in his association with unkempt offices and seedy boardinghouses. His disheveled appearance makes clear that he has been able to resist the lure of the commodity. By contrast, the gay male characters' association with luxurious surroundings suggests that they occupy the same position in relation to the commodity form as the femme fatale. Wholly immersed in commodity culture, they are the antithesis of the hardworking, self-denying entrepreneur." Corber is a master of literary criticism, and his analysis of Williams, Vidal, and Baldwin must be read in its entirety to be appreciated. But I do want to introduce readers of this review to the type of insight which Corber provides. He writes that Tennessee Williams was criticized because "whereas Williams did not hesitate to deal openly with the gay male experience in his short stories and poetry, he refused to do so in his plays because they reached a broader audience and might expose his homosexuality to public scrutiny." According to Corber: "This argument positions Williams as a casualty of the closeted gay male subculture of the fifties." However, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Corber observes that "Big Daddy tries to convince [his son Brick] that he has no reason to feel ashamed of being homosexual." Corber notes that "the chief obstacle to Brick's inheriting the estate is his failure to produce an heir." Corber explains: "Brick's desire to remain in the closet indicates that he is unwilling to repress his homosexuality in exchange for securing his claims to the estate." Corber observes: "Brick makes love with Maggie at the end of the play not because he has undergone a moral transformation and is no longer homosexual but because he refuses to relinquish the protection afforded by the closet." Corber's reading of this classic of American drama is exceptionally good. Corber's analysis of Gore Vidal's "controversial novel" The City and the Pillar, in which the "treatment of the of the gay male subculture was clearly intended to contest the dominant understanding of gay male desire," also is impressive. In Vidal's own words, he "set out to shatter the stereotype [that male homosexuality was confined for the most part tp interior decorators and ballet dancers] by taking as [his] protagonist a completely ordinary boy of the middle class." According to Corber, Vidal "hoped that by observing the gay male subculture through the eyes of an `ordinary' middle-class boy, he could dismantle the binary logic of sexual difference, a logic that made homosexuality seem `unnatural.'" Corber explains that Vidal attempted "to define a male subject-position that is not only homosexual but also masculine." According to Corber, "the gay macho style represents the use of an oppositional form of masculinity that first emerged in the fifties as a means of staging a desire that does not conform to the domesticated values of the white suburban middle class." For instance, the character "Bob," according to Vidal, "perceives his responsibilities to his family as incompatible with his manhood. He seems to think that providing for his family necessitates becoming an `organization man' who submits to a corporate hierarchy." Corber's ultimate purpose is to "show that the roots of the gay liberation movement lay in gay male opposition to the Cold War consensus" and to challenge "the tendency of historians" to treat the Fifties "as the Dark Ages of gay male identity and politics." In Corber's view, Williams, Vidal, and Baldwin "laid the foundation for the gay liberation movement."
Some readers will find Corber's focus too narrow. In my opinion, Corber only touched on the concept that, during the early Cold War, homosexuality was equated with Communism and left-wing subversion in order to marginalize and suppress gay male subculture. The question, of course, is: Why? The 1950s in the United States was an era of great anxiety, and many Americans were searching for enemies in order to vent their multi-faceted frustrations. According to Corber, "the Cold War construction" characterized "the homosexual" as a subversive who had be exposed because he was secretly undermining the nation's morality. Corber has a creative and deeply-penetrating intelligence. Taken on its own terms, this book is superb.
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The Gender of Racial Politics and Violence in America: Lynching, Prison Rape, and the Crisis of Masculinity (Counterpoints (New York, N.Y.), Vol. 163.)
William F. Pinar
Manufacturer: Peter Lang Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 0820451320 |
Book Description
Perhaps not since Gunnar Myrdal's 1944 classic An American Dilemma has a book appeared as synoptic and unsettling as The Gender of Racial Politics and Violence in America. Here William F. Pinar elucidates the great "American dilemma," that "peculiar" institution of racial subjugation, especially its gendered-and specifically "queer"-psychosexual dynamics. Explicating in detail two imprinting episodes in American racial history-lynching and prison rape-Pinar argues that the gender of racial politics and violence in America is in some fundamental sense "queer." This book will be of interest to students in education, cultural studies, African American studies, women's and gender studies, and history.
Customer Reviews:
Surprisingly fresh for an older book..........2007-02-03
This is a very good and well-researched book. Although it was written by a woman, it is clear that she really understands her subject matter. The book is filled with understanding, compassion and practical advice. It explains why men start acting like adolescents again, what they are really seeking and how to find it. It is an informative and entertaining read and maintains a freshness because it addresses a life stage that is universal and part of the human condition no matter how things have changed since it was written. I got a lot of useful information and comfort from it.
Not bad.......2000-06-11
I've found that most 'self help' books are full of quite a bit of fluff, but this one has a considerable amount of good advice in it. It seems that the author, a woman, is a very good researcher and that despite the fact that it was written two decades ago, the subject itself is really timeless. She talks about the ways that men commonly handle midlife changes and - though she seems to understand and feel for the plight of middle age men - offers suggestions on how to deal with the root problems that can make men behave like kids again. She talks about being a seeker, not a dropout. She talks about attitudes being more important than actions. She talks about how a midlife journey can be taken in the mind, not necessary requiring geographical or even career changes. I'm forty one this year, and this book contained a lot of stuff that made sense.
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- An absorbing and reflective saga about how difficult yet ultimately rewarding it is to improve oneself.
- Through the 21st Century Looking Glass
- The plight of Modern Man
- Don't Judge this book by its Cover, or Title!
- ***holes/Jerks/Objects of Women's Loathing
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Menopause Man
Mel Mathews
Manufacturer: Fisher King Press
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SamSara
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LeRoi
ASIN: 0977607615 |
Book Description
He's finally met his dream girl, but Kate's father unexpectedly up and dies and off she goes cross-country to join her grieving family and to console her mother, leaving Malcolm to wallow in his loneliness and slip back into his 'old' ways.
Like a lot of people, he'd developed the habit of looking for love in all the wrong places. He really wasn't all that bad of a fellow. Yeah, he was selfish and self-absorbed, but Malcolm Clay had some redeeming qualities, too.
Something had changed, something he couldn't quite put his finger on, and it was driving him, as well as a few others, half nuts. He might have been chasing his tail, he might have been making mistakes, but he was still trying. One thing was certain: Malcolm hadn't given up! He'd just become a little distracted, that was all.
Customer Reviews:
An absorbing and reflective saga about how difficult yet ultimately rewarding it is to improve oneself........2007-10-07
The sequel to "LeRoi", Menopause Man is a novel starring a "quasi-rake" male protagonist Malcolm Clay, divorced, middle-aged, disdaining the religious heritage of his childhood, and generally self-absorbed... though sporting some significantly redeeming qualities. Harsh reality has stripped away his previous charmed fairytale life; he has spent fruitless years searching outside of himself amid an ephemeral world for internal reconciliation. Menopause Man is ultimately a novel of growth, and learning to evolve above being ruled by desires and how to let go of the false idols of meaningless money, indulgence, or sex without love. An absorbing and reflective saga about how difficult yet ultimately rewarding it is to improve oneself.
Through the 21st Century Looking Glass.......2007-04-23
Mel Mathews is a sensitive observer of the human condition, with an emphasis on the Male Human Condition of our time. He has created a character in Malcolm Clay that is a baby boomer Holden Caulfield, a variation on John Updike's Rabbit Angstrom, and he manages to take us by the hand and lead us through the bumpy terrain of current interpersonal relationships as well as anyone writing today.
We first met Malcolm Clay in Mathew's first novel 'LeRoi' as a middle aged man trapped in a successful but boring occupation who becomes stranded in a dusty little truck stop where he is forced to slow his pace to adjust to the fertile characters he created there. Well, now Malcolm is living in Carmel, California, having been divorced, forgoing his childhood entrapping religious heritage, traipsing through many brief and physically oriented affairs while deciding to change his life as an alcoholic tractor salesman to that of a reformed AA writer ('..he didn't think anyone should be called an addict, alcoholic, codependent, or any other of the pathologized clinical diagnosis that propelled a person into another lie'). His existence is populated in this gorgeous coastline area of California by all manner of women and men whose connection to life is through tenuous strings tied to fairly shallow buoys. Most of the novel is conversational, with Malcolm discovering the intrinsic personality defects of characters ranging from his landlady Mrs. Shams to men on the make to physical therapist Jenny who manages to keep a physical distance between the lusty but controlled Malcolm and her fragile, purging diet, Zen-like self.
What Malcolm discovers in this 'quasi- rake's progress' is his inner feminine 'who has been waiting for me to come for her so that she can breathe new life into me, animate me, and give me a new meaning.' Women 'never lied because of the devastating moral injustices it caused. Instead of lying, they just accidentally forgot to tell the important stuff'. All this is a journey so well written that the novel calls for pause to enjoy the sheer ebullience of the verbiage. Mel Mathews is a fine writer, finding his way through life in these times. He is a reliable companion on the trek we all are taking. And now on to the next volume in the series, 'SamSara', addictively! Grady Harp, April 07
The plight of Modern Man.......2007-03-27
In Menopause Man, Mel Mathews' follow-up to Leroi, we get to see the beginnings of the transition from a man who relies on the exterior trappings and traps of a modern male to one who is more balanced, embracing his feminine soul in order to strength and free his male one. The book is filled with Jungian explorations of dreams and the archetypes that rule us all, and uses the transient personalities and settings of the California coast to bring the abstract into the concrete. We meet lots of characters coming and going from rented cabins and studio apartments and restaurants and cafes, all of which serve as different aspects of the (anti)hero, Malcolm Clay's, own struggles and levels of development. The characters are driven toward the essentials--food, shelter, income, and sex, and are trying to find where love fits in among them. Malcolm is the quintessential searcher--he has transitioned from a life as a successful tractor saleman to the life of a writer and he is trying to transition his take on and interactions with women as well. He reads Henry Miller and Stephen Hawking and writes his own heart out whenever he can. There is no easy solutions to the questions posed in the book and the transformation Malcolm is undergoing is slow and painful. He is so human, so rough and opinionated and at times shallow that he is often hard to like, but in the end there was enough of a glimmer of self-realization that I look forward to seeing where Mathews takes him in the books that will follow.
Don't Judge this book by its Cover, or Title!.......2006-10-22
In spite of the title and serious cover and back cover copy, this novel, insightful and penetrating as it may be, is filled with humor. In other words, don't judge Menopause Man by its cover!
His writing style may seem a bit raw at times, but Mel Mathews, in his unique and uncanny way, takes his readers inside, deep into the soul of a man as he struggles to become free of the patriarchal values that continue to haunt humanity to this very day. Menopause Man brings us closer to the reality that men have equally suffered from what the Women's Movement began to defy decades ago.
A theme seems to run through Mel's first few novels, suggesting that the so-called problems between the sexes is not so much about man and woman being at odds with one another, but instead, people being at odds within themselves, being at odds with not only the masculine and feminine aspect that are part of every human being, but of an entire host of other images that comprise our very souls.
In other words, the battle isn't out there: Us against Them or Them against Us. The controversies are not so much about issues between the opposite sexes, different religions, or with unfamiliar cultures and customs, but instead have their roots within our very own beings.
My only criticism, or better yet, concern, for this series of novels is that perhaps they are a bit ahead of their time. I hope I'm wrong, but can't help wondering if the society of this day and age is prepared to accept the challenges and responsibilities that this author puts forth?
***holes/Jerks/Objects of Women's Loathing.......2006-09-23
In Menopause Man, Mel Mathews sheds light on the truth behind the ***hole. Malcolm Clay, by all appearances is just this--until the reader is given the opportunity to delve more deeply into the mind (and heart) of this character. One cannot help but develop compassion for this man who at first comes off as a shallow, sexist, jerk. It becomes evident that, not only does Malcolm yearn to be loved--truly loved--by a woman, but he has keen insight into the reasons why he has not been able to receive this love into his life. As a female reader, there were times I wanted to smack this book shut and throw it against the wall. Yet, I was riveted and couldn't put it down. All and all, I both loathed and cared deeply for Malcolm Clay as I grew to understand his hell, and perhaps the plight of many others.
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On Men: Masculinity in Crisis
Anthony W. Clare
Manufacturer: Vintage
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Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: 009941614X |
Customer Reviews:
The Phallic Fallacy.......2007-05-04
The Irish psychiatrist Anthony Clare attempts to explain masculinity, challenge men over their obsessions with power and control and finally present something of a solution in the shape of fatherhood in the private sphere. He discusses and dismisses biology as a relevant factor in the problems of male violence and entrenchment in maladaptive behaviors and prefers environmental causes. The kinds of observations he makes about men are,eg:
Men have a profound anxiety about male sexuality.
Women present the greatest challenge to male control.
Men recognize the tragedy of their enslavement to their libidos.
Men turn their anxieties into hate which they project onto women.
'Responding to the awesome problem of male violence by desperately seeking to identify an equivalent amount of female violence against men is a fairly predictable example of male projection and denial'.
If men and violence do go together then the debate over masculinity and the survival of the species will be dominated by the need to render men redundant.
The lack of desire of many men to exercise parental responsibility weakens the case for all fathers.
Clare mainly discusses men as fathers, includes some psychology theory and predominently emphasizes the benefits of the involvement of fathers not only for children but for the fathers themselves, also arguing that this benefits men in their careers and role in the community. He argues that substantial father involvement correlates with successful children but misses the serious possiblility that fathers who enjoy involvement with children have positive character and personality traits and it is the inheritance of these traits that makes the children themselves successful.
The most disturbing parts of this book, though, are the matter-of-fact statements about the way men think of themselves and of women,eg:
Men expect to gain their rightful place - on top.
Men consider women to be psychologically and physically weak. Women are seen as being impotent, submissive and sick.
Men represent strength, power, rationality.
Men fear, hate marginalize, denigrate and categorize women.
Men continually strive to dominate and control women.
Men view women's apparent acquiescence with contempt.
Men take for granted their greater importance than women, their centre-stage position, that women too accept this and focus their attention on men.
These supremacist attitudes would be far more unacceptable if directed at any other group than women. For men to even think that the death of the patriarch and such awful attitudes deserve to be mourned does not bode well for the success of this enterprise. It is almost funny, or should that be tragic?, when Clare asks why men are not attractive to women!!!
There may be a large element of bluff and bluster in male behavior but that is certainly no acceptable excuse. Clare argues for the end of patriarchy to be acknowledged and for men not to control others but to liberate themselves.
My main disagreement with Clare is his dismissal of biology because biology can give further insight into phallic narcissism and the male drive to dominate eg for males the penis and potency are the essential means to avoid personal genetic extinction. He has to somehow convince or force a woman or women to do his reproductive work for him ie he depends on women not to reject him and is under constant pressure to prove his superiority over other males. While competing with other males he may well feel disorientated when women start to appear on these male battlefields ie in the workplace.
But this is no ultimate excuse nor reason to perpetuate the totally unacceptable subjugation of women. Anthony Clare's solution of men focusing more on being attractive to women as involved fathers and as men who value the private sphere as much as the public is indeed attractive and could certainly make massive improvements for everyone. Whether men are able to appreciate this and let go of the phallic fallacy is another matter altogether!
Books:
- Critical Thinking: Tools for Taking Charge of Your Professional and Personal Life
- Cuffed by Candlelight: An Erotic Romance Anthology (Noire Passion)
- Doing Qualitative Research: Circles within Circles (The Falmer Press Teachers' Library)
- Ending The Search For Mr. Right: How to Be Found by the Man You've Been Looking For
- Every Man's Battle: Winning the War on Sexual Temptation One Victory at a Time (The Every Man Series)
- Experience Yoga Nidra: Guided deep relaxation
- Five Minds for the Future
- Flashman: A Novel (Flashman)
- For Women Only: What You Need to Know about the Inner Lives of Men
- Glorious Appearing: The End of Days (Left Behind #12)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- For One More Day
- A Feast for Crows
- The Annotated Lost World
- The God Delusion
- The Films in My Life
- A Radar History of World War II: Technical and Military Imperatives
- Trees of Texas: An Easy Guide to Leaf Identification
- Tax Policy and the Impending Economic Monetary Union: Generale Bank Lectures 1997-1998
- The Fourth Dimension: The Next Level of Personal and Organizational Achievement
- The Economist Pocket World in Figures, 2002 Edition
The Broken Image: Restoring Personal Wholeness through Healing Prayer
The Healing Presence: Curing the Soul Through Union with Christ
Restoring the Christian Soul: Overcoming Barriers to Completion in Christ through Healing Prayer
Listening Prayer: Learning to Hear Gods Voice and Keep a Prayer Journal
Real Presence: The Christian Worldview of C. S. Lewis as Incarnational Reality
