Letters to the Editor
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consider the source
Agree with the above posters that quoting Amazon.com reviewers is gratuitous and on a site like Salon, cheap.
Dowd's book is a lightning rod for male hostility no matter where it's discussed; the twist here is that much if not most of the commentary I've read on the book appears to have been written by readers who read -- at most -- only the excerpts that appeared in the New York Times Magazine a couple of weekends ago. Otherwise, they might have noticed that:
a.) Dowd frequently writes tongue-in-cheek (may I introduce tongues into this argument?). Any reviewer, on Amazon or elsewhere, should look up "polemic" before writing a single word. And, you know, read the book. How many readers do you even understood that she labeled Hillary Clinton a (possibly unnecessary) "man" in the final chapter? I don't see anyone berating her for going all chauvinist on a feminist icon. Could this have something to do with illustrating the fungibility of gender roles?
b.) Dowd spends very little time on her own dating adventures and I must have missed the part in the book where she allegedly bemoans her lack of a husband. The most "damning" quotes about men are, in fact, made by men, and only in a mostly scientific (but still ironic) context involving the deterioration of the Y chromosome:
Are men necessary? I asked Dr. (Brian) Sykes.
"Clearly not," he replied.
Are men necessary? I asked British geneticist Steve Jones.
"You don't even need the sex slaves," (referring to an earlier quote by Norman Mailer) Dr. Jones assured me. "You just need their cells in a freezer. You'd have to have a very good electricity supply."
Some guys I know have been fretting for years that they may be rendered obsolete if women get biological and financial independence, learning how to reproduce and refinance without them.
Hello? Satire.
c.) Dowd clearly likes men very much. The book's title and subtitle should have been reversed, because "when sexes collide" is a more accurate indicator of its content. Dowd's aim isn't to dis the male race, but to point out the increasingly baffling problem of gender roles and relations. She holds no sacred cows, and all subjects: male, female, liberal, conservative, feminist, religious and so forth -- are open to her critical observation. The book is sloppily edited (I say that as an editor) but its observations (notice I didn't say "conclusions," because she leaves those to the reader) are mostly sound.
If she deflates an ego or two along the way, well, that says far more about the egos involved than about the book.