Here's an advance review from Kirkus Reviews:
A call for men and women to stand down from the gender wars, culminating
with a 12-step program that is intended to lay common ground in "trying to
make life better for all of us--women, men, and our children." The
author's thesis is that, as feminists of the 1970s achieved the goals they
appropriately sought--i.e., equality in the workplace and elsewhere in
society--ideologies hardened.
Young disputes the feminist belief that the
personal is political; what's personal is personal, she claims, and the
battle for equal rights is not an excuse for portraying men as
fundamentally malevolent." Although feminists themselves are divided
regarding various issues--pornography, most visibly--they share, according
to the author, "a propensity for sweeping statements based on modest
evidence."
Young offers evidence that other basic feminist credos are
mistaken: e.g., that male violence is directed primarily against women or
that male privilege comes without any price (men die younger, she points
out). Young, a journalist who describes herself as a "dissident feminist,"
contends that rape is not a bias crime.
She also examines the men's
movement, where men often take on the role of victim, and what she views as
the confused response from political conservatives regarding gender roles.
The 12 steps to an egalitarian society include such seemingly innocuous
(but, on examination, distinctly provocative) propositions as "Take gender
politics out of the war on domestic violence" and "In politics, stop
treating women as an interest group and acting as if women's claims were
more legitimate than mens." A bucket of cool water on whiners of both
sexes, along with a convincing appeal to look "fairly and compassionately
at both sides of these conflicts."
-- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates,
LP. All rights reserved.
