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Book-of-the-Month... JUNE 2007 |
MEN ARE
GREAT:
How to
Build a Relationship That Brings out the Best in Both of
You
by
Karen Jones
founder of The Heart Matters
 "Karen
Jones has done both men and women a favor by
writing
MEN ARE GREAT. She urges women,
in particular, to recognize, acknowledge, and do
something--at least in their own personal
relationships--about the negative stereotypes of
men that now prevail in our society. These
stereotypes are not only negative but also
destructive; they destroy the self-confidence of
men, and they destroy relationships between men
and women. In the long run, moreover, they could
destroy society.
How? Not so much by increasing
sexual polarization (something bad but also
something that, to some extent, has always been
with us) but by encouraging women to believe
that they can live entirely without men (which
has become a possibility recently due to the
availability of sperm banks and new reproductive
technologies). Although Jones focuses her
attention on psychological problems, she does
refer to some of the cultural ones that generate
them. She quotes people who don't rant but
instead discuss with sensitivity the inherent
complexity of relationships between men and
women. And she points readers to other useful
books on men."
Paul Nathanson, Ph.D., co-author of Spreading
Misandry: the Teaching of Contempt for Men in Popular
Culture and also Legalizing Misandry: From Public Shame
to Systemic Discrimination against Men
Karen
Jones wrote
MEN ARE GREAT primarily for
women but I think that it will be of equal
interest to men. It should help many men
understand why they often feel shame about
simply being a man. Hearing affirming, positive
comments about men from a woman is a welcome
addition to the current gender dialogue.
Ms. Jones quotes
many of the authors, columnists and activists,
including women,
who have appeared in the pages of MENSIGHT. The
fact that Karen interviewed me and used a quote
from an article that I wrote has nothing to do
with this review... or the fact that my
quote appears in the same chapter that I chose
to reprint below. It was purely coincidental!
Jim Bracewell, Editor of MENSIGHT
MAGAZINE
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Columns, Articles and Men's Issues News... |
MEN'S NEWS TICKER © 2000 - Disable pop-up blocker
and click on headline for story details
BOOK-OF-THE-MONTH
EXCERPT...
by Karen Jones
MEN ARE GREAT - Chapter Three: THE CURRENT
(SAD) STATE OF AFFAIRS
As I did research for this book, I read and watched for jokes,
ads, commercials, magazine articles, movies, television programs
and whatever else was out there that was imparting negative
messages about men. I also came upon material (which is included
in the recommended reading list at the back of this book) that
documented and commented on this issue. These authors describe a
worrisome trend of male-bashing that’s weakening the social
fabric of our culture. We already know how damaging and painful
it was when women were systematically seen as the “lesser” sex
in American society. I see the same damaging, painful and
pervasive trend going on now, except that it’s men who are being
demeaned and ridiculed.
The New York Times ran a story written by Courtney Kane in 2005
about the way men were being negatively portrayed in the media.
The title was pretty provocative: “The Media Business:
Advertising; as spots belittling women fade out, men become the
target of the seemingly inevitable gender sneer.” The author
wrote about how men were feeling dismayed at the portrayal of
men in advertising as incompetent, bumbling idiots. Husbands and
fathers were the biggest targets, according to the author, as
objects of ridicule, pity or even scorn.
By the way, this isn’t just impacting grown men. During my
interview with Gordon Clay (www.menstuff.org), he mentioned
results from research conducted with boys in high school. They
found a big thing for these boys was to get through a day
without shame – that was a good day for them. Clay feels it is
what men do, though: “be a man; handle it, deal with it, and it
still hurts.” I got a bigger sense of what is happening to boys
today through reading
The War Against Boys by Christina Hoff
Sommers (and if you’ve got sons, I urge you to read this
book). She shows us through many examples, and through the many
experts in education she talks with, that there’s an attitude in
schools that masculinity is something bad. The culture is
suspicious and frightened of boys. In her own experience
interacting with these kids, Ms. Sommers wrote of finding boys
expecting to be attacked for who they were. Yikes! What’s in
store for these young men as they grow up?
Full
Excerpt
Depression Study...
by
Jed Diamond
In order to better understand the
different ways men and women experience depression, Jed Diamond
has developed a research questionnaire that could give us the
answers we need to help men and women and save lives. We are
looking for males and females who may be suffering from
depression as well as men and women who are not.
If you
would be willing to help with this study simply click on the
following link:
Please take the test yourself and pass on the
information to others. If everyone who is interested passes
this information on we will have a large sample which will give
us the information we need to help millions. Thank you for
helping.
As a way to say, "thank you," for helping, Jed Diamond is
offering a free copy of his popular e-book on Male Depression, a
$29.95 value. After you finish filling out the questionnaire,
drop him an e-mail with "Study" in the subject line and he will
send you the link to the e-book.
Results of the study will be available on his website at
www.MenAlive.com
COYOTE...
monthly column by Dick Prosapio
Moovin' On and Movin' Out...
With
teens gone living in the Land of Oz is more idyllic and softer.
Or at least, it seems that way on the surface. But hey, what's
wrong with "superficials" anyway? I mean I liked leather seats
in my Miata, and that weird and wonderful, two-color paint job
that turned blue when viewed from one direction and emerald
green from another. And beneath those surface niceties a very
fine Mazda engine and smooth shifting five speed transmission
and responsive handling.yeah, that was nice.
Of course the reality is that I sold the Miata
'cause it rode like a brick on New Mexico's cheap composite
highways, but I do still have the memories of the fantasy
part. By the way I've noticed that this fancy-dancin' with
reality is also the secret of the attraction of porn for guys.
Who would really want to get involved with any of those
performers in a one-to-one relationship? The "shine" would be
nice but the ride would prove very unsettling long term.
Even short term.
Besides being done with up-close-and-personal
child rearing our realities here on the range have shifted quite
a bit in another area. For the first time in fifteen years, we
do not have to consider The Cattle. Except for the finished
product sort in a "free-range, no-steroid sirloin" or a really
good hamburger we no longer have to do the cow chasing routine.
Why? Because our cow punchin' neighbor to the east of us has
fenced off our land.
Go to Article
GUEST
ARTICLE...
by Glenn Sacks
Dissident Domestic Violence
Experts Announce Ground-Breaking Conference: 'From Ideology to
Inclusion'
As
I've noted on many occasions, the domestic violence
establishment is not telling us the full truth about domestic
violence, and many destructive family law and criminal law
policies have been based on misinformation.
Research clearly
establishes that women are frequently the aggressors in domestic
combat, often employing the element of surprise and weapons to
compensate for men's strength. Yet arrest and prosecution
policies are stacked against men, as is the public dialogue on
this important issue. Perhaps worst of all, misguided women's
groups' distortion of the domestic violence issue has been the
leading impediment to passing shared parenting legislation.
Last year dozens
of leading authorities in the domestic violence field formed the
National Family Violence Legislative Resource Center
(NFVLRC) to change the domestic violence system. The NFVLRC
advocates for non-discriminatory and evidence-based policies and
seeks to correct the many damaging laws and policies which have
been based on misleading claims.
Go to Article
THE NEW
INTIMACY... monthly column by
Judith Sherven, Ph.D. and James
Sniechowski, Ph.D.
Family, Friends and Even Mentors:
Are They On Your Side... Part 3
So now in Part 3, we urge you to stay
alert to how you are being treated by family members, friends,
acquaintances, even mentors and people you've just met.
Get in the habit of answering these
questions in every interaction you have:
1) Is the other person sincerely
interested in you?
1a) Or, does the other person
constantly hog the conversation, talking on and on only about
themselves and who they know?
2) Does the other person ask about
your life, your interests, your goals?
2a) Or does the other person just
joke around, or complain, or obsess about the news or gossip . . .
never developing any real connection with you?
3) Does the other person encourage
you to move forward in your life?
3a) Or does the other person put you down when you mention a new
goal or a desire to live your life differently?
4) Does the other person enjoy and
reinforce your unique self-expression?
Go to Article
GUEST
ARTICLE...
by Steven Stosney, Ph.D.
The Last Thing You Want is
Love Without Compassion
The
most powerful attachment emotion is not love; it’s compassion.
Compassion makes us sensitive to the individuality, depth, and
vulnerability of loved ones. It makes us appreciate the fact that
they are different from us, with a separate set of experiences, a
different temperament, and different vulnerabilities, all of which
make them give different meaning to similar emotions. For example,
when you tell your partner that you “need to talk,” you mean that
you want to feel closer to him. He thinks you want to tell him yet
again that he’s failing you. Without compassion, neither of you can
understand your differences, even though you may love one another
completely.
The very intensity of love, when it exists without high levels of
compassion, seems to makes us merge with one another and assume that
our loved ones see the world exactly the way we do. This obscures
what they actually feel and think, and, in large part, who they
really are. They become merely a source of emotion for us, rather
than separate persons in their own right. If they make us feel good,
we put them on a pedestal. If they make us feel bad by not seeing
the world the way we do, we feel betrayed and sometimes vengeful.
Love without compassion is superficial, possessive, controlling, and
sometimes dangerous.
Go to Article
JEFF'S LIFE... monthly
column by Jeff Stimpson
The Ned Baron...
"'Dogfight'
is a light version of WWI air combat. The Germans and Americans
each get six biplanes divided into two squadrons of three planes
each. Each squadron gets a hand of combat maneuver cards, and
players move one plane from each squadron engaging and evading
each other. For each plane shot down, you receive an ace token
that entitles you to hold a larger hand of cards. Anti-aircraft
guns guard each home squadron, and the lucky flyer has the
opportunity to strafe the enemy's planes on the ground."
- From the really cool site
www.dogfightgame.com.
One hundred and sixteen squares. Six little
plastic planes, moved by dice. One 45-year-old, and one
6-year-old.
"The deck has only two 'Loop' cards, Ned, so
be careful you don't leave the tail of your plane exposed if you
don't have a 'Loop' card. Don't show me your cards, Ned!" He
folds them against his chest, crinkling them! They haven't made
these things since the 45-year-old here was a very little boy.
If you're attacked from the side, I explain to
Ned, play a "Barrel Roll" card. If you're attacked head-on, play
your highest burst card. We start slow, just using two planes a
side and a few cards. I help Ned pick the cards, position the
planes for his next move ("You can't move that way, Ned; when
you ended your last turn, you left your plane pointing the other
way ..."), and learn such tricks as putting the tail of your
airborne plane against the edge of the playing board when you
haven't drawn any "Loop" cards, to prevent the enemy from
attacking from behind.
I know this game. I played "Dogfight" with my
older brother Lee when I was a kid. When he grew away from
getting his ass kicked over the Western Front, I invented a
solitaire version, and even - as time ticked disturbingly into
my teen years - imagined and documented careers of fictitious
pilots on both sides who lived and died like meteors. World War
I pilots carried no parachutes, but they fought in a time of
honor, when victors saluted the vanquished just before the
latter smashed into the ground.
Go to Article
DADS, DON'T FIX YOUR KIDS...
monthly column by
Mark Brandenburg,
M.A
Do You Say Your
Sorry?...
There's
one thing that's pretty consistent about parenting your kids:
You'll keep making mistakes with them. Whether it's getting
angry, forgetting something, or treating them badly, we all seem
to make our share of mistakes. And sometimes, there's only one
thing you can do about it:
Say you're sorry - mean it - and move
on in your life.
Go to Article
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Men's Book Reviews by J. Steven Svoboda |
LATEST
REVIEWS
REVIEW:
See Jane
Hit: Why Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About
it
By James Garbarino, Ph.D. ©2006
Seven
years after writing “Lost
Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them,”
James Garbarino, Ph.D., professor of humanistic psychology at
Loyola University Chicago, has published what could roughly
speaking be described as a companion volume, “See Jane Hit: Why
Girls are Growing More Violent and What We Can Do About It.”
Garbarino writes well, and his book addresses a topic that has
drawn significant interest in recent years, having been
addressed in at least four other recent volumes. “See Jane Hit”
is interesting reading for gender activists, since Garbarino
writes from a more mainstream perspective that uncritically
accepts some anti-male falsehoods, yet at the same time is a
generally thoughtful and fair-minded commentator.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Straight Talk for Men about Marriage:
What Men Need to Know About Marriage (And What Women Need to Know
About Men)
By Martin G. Friedman ©2006
The author has put together an appealingly presented, male-friendly
guide to improving the quality of our marriages. As Friedman is the
first to point out, this isn’t exactly rocket science. We need to
learn to do the basics. A marriage is a path to learning about
ourselves. Projecting our discontent onto our spouse doesn’t do
either of us any favors.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Self-Made Man:
One Woman’s Journey into Manhood and Back Again
By Norah Vincent
Norah Vincent has produced a new
book whose simple underlying concept nevertheless seems to possess
all the potential power of, say, John Howard Griffin’s classic Black Like Me, in which the Caucasian author masqueraded as a
black man and was astonished at the depths of the discrimination and
barriers he discovered. Author Vincent tries to do the same thing
for gender, dressing in drag as “Ned” and entering various supposed
male bastions to report on what she discovers.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
The Smart Couple’s Guide to the
Wedding of Your Dreams:
Planning Together for Less Stress and More Joy
By
By Judith
Sherven and James Sniechowski
Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski, husband-and-wife psychologists
and authors of three books previously reviewed by me in these pages
(The New Intimacy, Opening to Love 365 Days a Year, and Be
Loved for Who You Really Are) have just published a new book on
their favorite topic, love and marriage. In a literal sense, The
Smart Couple’s Guide to the Wedding of Your Dreams covers a
narrower subject than any of their three previous books. But
actually, predictably enough given the authors’ excellent writing
skills and tireless, creative devotion to promoting passion, their
latest offering manages to transcend the limits of the genre of
wedding guides. Not seeing a book that went beyond the
technicalities of wedding planning and touched the spirit of the
event, they took the plunge and wrote it!
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Partnering: A
New Kind of Relationship
By Hal Stone and Sidra Stone
© 2006
Hal and Sidra Stone are, like Judith Sherven and James Sniechowski
(whose latest book is reviewed elsewhere in this issue) a
husband-and-wife psychologist team who have written a number of
books and who travel the world giving workshops on their techniques
for improving one’s life and relationships. Partnering does
not represent a stunning advance on the authors’ previous work but
it does expand, in the specific context of relationships, on the
work they have helped pioneer in exploring the multiple selves each
of us contains through the voice dialogue technique.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
The Prodigal Father: A True Story of Tragedy, Survival, and
Reconciliation in an American Family.
By Jon DuPre.
Jon DuPre’s achievement with “The Prodigal Father” is stupefying.
What this correspondent for Fox Network News has done is so simple:
He has told the story of his family of origin, consisting of two
brothers, himself, and his mother and father. As a novel, the book
would fail. For one thing, the plot would be utterly unbelievable!
But “The Prodigal Father” is billed as an “autobiography,” and
written with loving detail and self-revelation so honest and so deep
that took my breath away. As such, it is utterly compelling and
simultaneously completely credible.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
REVIEW:
Gendercide and Genocide
Edited by Adam Jones
© 2006
Apart from the rarest exceptions (such as the not-to-be-missed “Female
‘Circumcision’ in Africa: Culture, Controversy, and Change,” Edited
by Bettina Shell-Duncan and Ylva Hernlund), edited volumes tend to
be hit-and-miss affairs. It’s hard enough simply to find an
appropriate topic, to accumulate contributions that are varied
enough to provide interest but not so different that they work at
cross-purposes, and to publish the work. Maintaining a razor-like
focus as can easily be done with an individually authored book by
definition becomes almost impossible with an edited volume.
READ FULL REVIEW
PURCHASE
Archive of All Reviews & Interviews...
by J. Steven Svoboda.
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HONOR ROLL... Pay tribute to the
Veterans or Active Duty military in your life on our perpetual
Military Honor Roll page
Go to
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HONOR ROLL... Pay tribute to your
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VISIT
MENSIGHT Magazine
is another free service of The Men's Resource Network, Inc. (MRN).
It has grown out of the response that we have received from articles
posted on
TheMensCenter.com (TMC), our official
web-site. The first issue went on-line on May 1, 2000. (Archive)
MENSIGHT
is dedicated to publishing diverse articles for and about men.
We believe that there are valuable lessons to be learned from
the advocates of all the various men's issues.
MENSIGHT
will publish articles, stories and information that will be
welcomed by many and controversial to others. We offer the
magazine for your edification but you are free to disagree or
reject what you do not like. Be advised that we do not
necessarily agree with every position that is expressed here.
We hope that you will be entertained,
informed, educated, stimulated, and/or motivated by what you
read here. We seek to empower men to be the authority of their
own lives. We do not seek to tell men what to think or feel.
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