>
> Ted and Kelley,
>
> Thanks for your comments on my review of Susan Faludi's book. Just a
> couple of points.
>
> I think that it *is* actually difficult to write a coherent book about
> masculine identity without writing about women (as opposed to Papua New
> Guineans, say). So a book which treats manhood as something men do by
> themselves is going to be working at a real theoretical disadvantage. In
> the early 1900s people like TR and Veblen were anxious about what the rise
> in consumption and service employment meant for masculinity -- but they
> also lived in a world which had only recently been dominated by craft
> labor. If there's a new "crisis of masculinity" -- as Faludi
thinks; I'm curious whether you do -- it seems like it must be
> rooted in something else.
>
> I also wonder if Faludi's book would have been better if she'd looked in a
> more nuanced way at what masculinity means for men in different classes --
> the 24 year old stock option millionaires probably aren't having much
> trouble feeling in control, powerful, etc. these days.
>
> More generally, though, I plead guilty to your criticisms: I do wish there
> were more good, hard-hitting popular political books out there about
> feminism and about women. When someone who could have written a
good one instead decides to write about the topic of how men today have it rough
> because they are *men* -- rather than because they're workers -- it does
> kind of make me wonder what's up with feminism today.
>
> Kim Phillips-Fein