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Women's Fiction
The Decline of Males: The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women

The Decline of Males: The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women

List Price: $12.95
Your Price: $9.71
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 4 stars
Summary: a must read book
Review: 100 years ago when Ernest Belfort Bax wrote against feminism, the term he used was "men bashing." Today's badly feminized men use a dehumanized language for ourselves, "male bashing." Even to use the phrase "male bashing," even when complaining about feminism, accepts and perpetuates the dehumanization men. We are "MEN" not some dehumanized animals, "males."

The title of "The Decline of Males" sums up the book. Tiger hasn't the testosterone to declare himself a MAN! Yes, he's right, MEN have declined, and he's an example. His conclusions that it's because of "the pill" are myopic. Birth control pills provided exclusively to women (Virtually no research was done on male pills during the 20th century.) is the result of the decline of men, not the cause. Yes, it's good for some MEN to speak out, but please, we are "MEN"!

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: compelling book
Review: Its sad that ignorant,misguided and bigoted women take offense to a book like this.Women refuse to accept any blame or responsibility for any of the societal problems of today,despite the well-documented evidence of the harm that irrational and hateful feminism has caused.Yes,some men have done some unspeakable things,but so too have women.Besides,is that really rational justification to condemn and wage war on the entire male gender? No,it is not.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Feminists able to hold that tiger!
Review: Lionel Tiger is one of many people who pose no real threat to feminism but who wind up on the feminist "enemy's list" anyway.

In his 1969 book "Men in Groups", Tiger popularized the concept of "male bonding", and his studies of gender behavior in Israeli kibbutzim also raised some feminist ire.

In this more recent book, however, he notes the decline of males in terms of economics, reproduction, and morale and attributes it to the "pill". His explanation is convoluted and riveted in the observation that the "pill" enables females to have complete control of reproduction. Both partners are aware if the male is using a condom, but with the advent of the pill and intrauterine devices, only the female is aware of the likelihood of conception.

While one would expect these developments to have a significant impact on mating (if one naively assumes that the female partner ALWAYS has a zone of privacy large enough to keep such things secret), they hardly seem relevant to or adequate explanation for the near-complete disenfranchisement of males that Tiger alludes to, in virtually all industrial societies, even those with less advanced birth control methods. This disenfranchisement includes male declines (relative to females) in employment, educational attainment, and real wages; disengagement from their offspring; and the prevalence of male-bashing.

Interestingly enough, while Tiger expresses some inward trouble with male-bashing, he has no hesitation in quoting male-bashing sources approvingly to support his points. His bibliography is replete with articles titled with such endearing epithets as "Are Men Necessary?" and he expresses the wish that someone would republish Kate Millett's "Sexual Politics".

Tiger compares the women's revolution to the Marxist revolution and he goes off on the wrong track by deciding that the women's revolution is "different" somehow. Communists rebel over the means of production; women rebel over the means of reproduction. Tiger spends too much time sniffing bedroom sheets to allow it to occur to him that the causes of women making war on men in the name of feminism are the same as those that were behind the Communist revolution: envy and treachery.

Because the fact is that Tiger is not an anti-feminist. The ire that he raises among feminists stems from his occasional willingness to stray from the party line and to notice the real world behaving differently from the model suggested in feminist ant farms, as well as his willingness to consider human behavior in terms of evolutionary inheritance. He occasionally asks some tough questions of the feminists, but he asks them as innocuously as a timid student approaching a bombastic professor. This Tiger doesn't deliver the raw meat. His questions all boil down to the same thing: "What's to become of the males?"

And you get the idea that Tiger's mildly-expressed interest in saving the males is largely for preservationist reasons - the same reasons that might be advanced to save the spotted owl. He has no real sense that men have value other than as curiosities, and he's careful NOT to urge that males be saved at the expense of the matriarchal status quo.

Males are actually not fully human in Tiger's eyes. He has bought into the doctrine of the mutant Y chromosome and the oft-repeated notion that "basic" humanity is represented by the female structure.

And if he quietly bemoans what is going on today, he still wouldn't change a thing. He acknowledges that children are at increased risk in the presence of step-parents, but homosexual parents raising children (by nature, a step-parent arrangement) suits him fine.

The huge growth in the phenomenon of the single mother would appear to be a principal cause of isolating men from their offspring, but he spends much of this book singing paeans to single mothers. The world is overpopulated, in Tiger's eyes, when he wishes to defend the decision of women to pursue careers at the expense of childbirth and underpopulated when he wishes to praise the fertility of single mothers. By the way, if homosexual parenting and single motherhood raise some moral hackles, Tiger doesn't care. He has the soul of an intellectualoid, and he just CAN'T STAND moralizing.

The traditional system of men working for a family income and women wiving in exchange for support from that income SEEMED to work with less stress than imposed today, but Tiger certainly doesn't suggesting returning to it. Because, you see, women are not only more human than men but have economic skills that men might not have and he wouldn't dream of restricting them.

Why does he think this? Well, as an anthropologist, he notices the acquisitive behavior of single mothers as well as networking abilities of women in the West African marketplace and is suitably impressed. Yet the coiner of the concept of "male bonding" sternly calls for the breakup of male-only private clubs (whose existence would themselves suggest a male facility for networking, if he didn't choose to look at THESE networks through female-jaundiced glasses) because he finds them harmful to the legitimate career aspirations of women.

Couldn't women use their vaunted economic skills to form their own exclusive networks? Of course, Tiger SHOULD be well aware that they do just that and that these networks, unlike the male ones, have the blessing of the law and of society. It's the same old story: male advantages are described in terms of "oppression"; female advantages are described in terms of innate ability.

Tiger's solutions at the end of the book are puerile and don't amount to anything other than "Can't we get along?" He brings, not even a knife, but a sponge to the gunfight. His response to the degradation of males and (he acknowledges the possibility) the literal phasing out of the male population is as depressing as are the conditions that he describes. It all leads to the depressing conclusion that before men are able to convince women of the fallacies behind the concept of male inferiority, they will first have to convince themselves.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Fascinating Thesis, Not So Great Conclusion
Review: Lionel Tiger sets forth a fascinating theory regarding the future conduct of human relations in the book. Tiger suggests that the creation of massive government bureaucracies has fundamentally altered the family concept. I won't get into any more details, as I don't want to misstate his position, which he does a good job of laying out.

His writing is clear and relatively easy to read, which is always a plus in an academic work. The book can be read in a few days without difficulty. Tiger carefully lays out the evidence behind his theory, with each supporting leg bolstered with carefully detailed facts.

Where Tiger falls short, however, is with his conclusion. After laying out his thesis, Tiger offers only a cursory conclusion that comes as a great disappointment after the work he did laying out his theory. The reader is left asking the hard question: 'so what?' The book is still worth reading, as the thesis is provocative and well-argued, but Tiger really fell short by not offering a more comprehensive conclusion.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Crouching Lion, leaping Tiger
Review: Read this book again in the context of social change and ask why is it happening. LT documents many aspects of this issue and certainly does a good job focusing on bio-techincal issues but there is almost a sense of false cause here instead of wondering why both the technologies and the behaviors have developed. This book presents a stark argument and it feels right but why is it right? I think if we put this in the context of the wider issue of how societies react to environmental stresses we can view the decline of males (and the decline of females! since they are not reproducing either) as an example of our genes interacting with social behaviors to reduce our population. It is working in the developed countries. How do we get it to work everywhere?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: a must read book
Review: Remember gentlemen,Men do not have to emulate women to live a long healthy life,nor do they have to submit to voluntary castration.However,men do have to take responsibility for their own health and learn to value their own bodies the way men of other cultures do.Just because women hate men and maleness doesnt mean men should hate themselves or neglect their own bodies and health..or loathe their own [private parts].Despite the rampant bigotry against men and anything symbolic of maleness,men should take pride in themselves and their gender`s accomplishments.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Worth reading......
Review: The most invaluable things men can learn from this book are:The importance of taking care of one`s health,of avoiding the weakness of desiring relationships with women,of taking more interest in mens rights,interests and status,and maintaining a sense of pride in being a man,inspite of the degrading remarks women make about men,in the media.Read this book and replace your naive complacency with a new sense of purposeful awareness.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Ammunition for debate
Review: Well, I was expecting something a little more from Dr. Tiger. The conclusions he draws are very intellectual/philosophical, but seem to lack much real world experiance. I will concede that popular culture and laws in general are increasingly biased against men, and I personally have witnessed these laws destroy 2 of my now-divorced male friends.

At the expense of being labeled a "dinosaur" and a "misogynist", I must say that this book does gives ammunition for debate to a modern intelligent man who happens to encounter the ridiculous feminist. It allows you to debunk the BS she will throw at you, and based on the fact that she probably has more free time to read than you ever will (as illustrated in this book) its nice to have this little compendium of the male side to easily deflate her arguement. It's amazing how upset a self-righteous feminist can get when she is told she's wrong (its also very fun to watch, and one such episode is easily worth the price of this book).

Gentlemen, if you have had it with the sublime misandry you've got to deal with on a daily basis then by all means buy this book and unleash your newfound knowledge on our "better half" (snicker). It'll give you the facts that you intuitively know, but have found elusive.

Overall, an interesting and thought-provoking read.


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