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Download Book ↠ Is There Anything Good about Men Í ↠ ❴PDF / Epub❵ ★ Is There Anything Good about Men? Author Roy F. Baumeister – Horticulturetrader.co.uk Have men really been engaged in a centuries old conspiracy to exploit and oppress women? Have the essential differences between men and wOvide for others and if necessary to sacrifice themselves Baumeister shows that while men have greatly benefited from the culture they have created they have also suffered because of it Men may dominate the upper echelons of business and politics but far men than women die in work related accidents are incarcerated or are killed in battle facts nearly always left out of current gender debatesEngagingly written brilliantly argued and based on evidence from a wide range of disciplines Is There Anything Good About Men? offers a new and far balanced view of gender relations Here was a book which truly had a potential Yet it fails and fails miserablyIt's not that the premise of the author is wrong culture DO exploits men who are indeed expendable What is appalling here are the reasons given as to why culture is how it is; the solutions proposed; and where to take us all from there Let's call a spade a spade Roy F Baumeister might claim the contrary pages after pages nevertheless here's a sexist and prejudiced book lazy in its argumentation and poor in its biased and chauvinistic conclusions But first of all let's give him some credit and start by recognising where he is right At its core what is it all about? Well a powerful argument yes we live in a man's made world Yet such man made world always has been a double edge sword for men themselves It's been allowing them to thrive take charge suit their ambition and drive It also entails a culture which exploits them and make them expendable He in fact bashes against the feminists as he imagines them on that later who according to him are so brainwashed into reducing everything to a battle of gender that they delude themselves into believing there is such a thing as a patriarchy 'How can you say men are exploited if they run everything? The mistake in that way of thinking is to look at the top of society and draw conclusions about society as a whole Yes there are mostly men at the top But if you look at the bottom really at the bottom you'll find mostly men too These are the worst outcomes society has to confer And in each case men far outnumber women Look at the prisons the homeless death on the job being killed in battle'Indeed And had he stays onto that line of thinking and argumentation the author would have made a powerful impact the so called patriarchy is not a system to deliberately excludes women such exclusion was a by product; it's a competitive system let loose which has thrived only through toxic masculinity Men as a group surely reached the top but it came as a price them being expendable as individuals And here we could have gone in a society where feminism has been triumphing and women got empowered women thankfully gained access to the culture made by men They influence it The patriarchy is receding Yet if things have positively changed a great deal for them have they changed for men? Not much Toxic masculinity is still pretty much prevalent with all its nasty conseuences for men themselves again culture exploits men In fact I had picked up this book believing it would be a reflection of such It's notThe author doesn't go into that line of thinking and argumentation Instead where does he go? He attacks feminism as he perceives it and doing so demeans women It starts 'the idea that all men think of themselves as powerful beings is one of the most absurd and unfounded assertions in the gender studies arena The Imaginary Feminist often starts her analyses by thinking of the male role as one of power Few actual men think that way Most men know there is a hierarchy of power and that they are far from the top''the conventional view of men enjoying lives of ease and privilege while women toil and suffer is not correct'Well yes But then who would entertain such views about men? From my experience no one I have yet to come across a feminist who truly believes that there is a conspiracy of men to keep women down The funny thing is so is the author The whole book is in fact an argument against who he calls as in the first uote above the 'Imaginary Feminist' Oh boy I understand he means 'imaginary' as a pretend person but sadly it uickly turns out that his 'imaginary' is actually an embodiment of opinions that are not representative of feminism as a whole Don't get me wrong I loathe the victim culture and indulging in misandry of a certain trend of radical feminists as much as the author does But this trend is just that a loosie bunch of radicals Maybe such looneys are successful on American campuses? I don't know; I don't see them around Thing is such misandry is NOT what feminism is about and so his is a straw man argument through and throughIt gets worse The author mostly tries to explain how the culture men made came about or at least since women have been empowered and welcomed in what were once all male institutions how it came to be shaped by men Wow It's so sexist you'll be hard pressed to don't see it as plain misogynistic In fact he advances outdated arguments For instance he admits that men and women are biologically different and so have different drive men and women are social in different ways' where women prefer intimate and close relationships men prefer big groups The patriarchy then according to him is a by product of these differences 'The men formed armies churches corporations unions and governments The women did not Much later the women did begin to form a few large groups but mostly these were aimed at protesting against what the men did Men created groups that were proactive''The fact that culture emerged from the men's sphere is the key reason for the increase in gender ineuality Crucially the difference did not arise because women were pushed down as the Imaginary Feminist argues Rather it arose because men went up' In other words culture has been shaped by successful men because men gathering in large groups battled against each other for success Women never were in charge of anything because they never created anything and took no part in such battles not because they were deliberately excludedMind you he doesn't claim women are inferior in any way to men Contradicting himself he doesn't even claim that women are not motivated enough to create and evolve within big groups of their own What he claims brace yourself is that when women create big groups it's mostly as a drum to nag and whinge 'Women mostly do not do things in big groups Indeed the main thing women have done in large groups is to protest and complain about the men and the men's activities On this women have been useful and successful in collective work I refer here not only to the feminist movements from the suffragists onward but also to various campaigns to protest men's drunkenness to reduce vice such as by getting men to stop using prostitutes and the likeIs he serious? Is he sarcastic? Lost among so much sexist prejudices I admit I can't tell At least he had the decency to add in a separate sentence of course 'Women's groups were also active in campaigning against slavery'Ha Sweet At last Jokes asides here we go again debunking such bias There is no scientific evidence that women do indeed prefer close and intimate relationships over the competition within big groups The author seems to rely on socio biology to claim so yet he cites no evidence from the field to support the argument and I am not aware of any Here then are just as the terminology goes 'just so stories' More following the success of feminism and the integration of women in such big groups politics businesses women have proven themselves perfectly capable to succeed within such social environments at times even better than men themselves The biological argument then doesn't stand It doesn't stand yet the author relies entirely on it to explain the reason why despite decades of feminism positions of power are still in majority into the hands of men and not women 'there are real innate differences between men and women including in capabilities and inclinations they are rooted in biology people are born with these differences at least as tendencies'Let's emphasise 'capabilities and inclinations' I emphasise because it shows how deeply ingrained his bias are The issue is that talking about 'capabilities and inclinations' as he does he wrongly uses biology to explain and justify women being in subservient positions when they are To him indeed it's all about motivation only Do women really want to work the top jobs in sciences? Politics? Corporate businesses? Do they really want managerial positions in various fields of work? Or do they prefer to focus on 'close and intimate relationships' that is stay home to care for their families? According to this line of thinking there is no glass ceiling; just women not willing to make the sacrifices necessary to reach the top Women are biologically supposedly not tough enough ambitious enough driven enough He actually is very candid making this even shocking coming from a University Professor when men shaped the culture by taking risks and competing against each others women on the other hand were busy otherwise 'they competed to get a better versus less desirable mate And they did this not by besting other women at physical tasks but by being beautiful and sweet and lovable than the others'Yep You've read that right This book smacks of such sexist prejudices You want another one? Here's another one 'For the females being attractive healthy and yes loving and lovable were the traits that were passed along to the offspring For the males the vital traits were strength aggressiveness and ambition'Obviously as a result 'striving for greatness has often demanded and still demands a dedication to work and career that is difficult to reconcile with having a large brood of children Hence that passion for greatness may not be as deeply ingrained in the psychology of today's women'I wanted to laugh It could be funny It's not I will pass over the poor understanding if at all of the nature nurture interplay in evolutionary biology I will point instead to something way alarming explaining the fate and position within society of whole groups of people here women by blaming it on their sole biology It's appalling Historically such way of thinking even had terrible conseuences If anything I am flagger basted that such crp has been published by Oxford University Press There I said it crpI don't like cheap insults so to illustrate my point I will pick on one just one of his examples women giving up on successful career when they become mothers to leave it instead to their male partner to be the breadwinner I choose this example because it strikes me as him missing even the whole point of the core argument he is supposedly making in this book that is our culture exploits men He is right to point at women absent from top positions despite societal incentives to put them there and he is right to link it to motherhood Where he misses the point by a long shot is when he claims that this is so because women are biologically geared to have less motivation than men they ultimately settle for the cosy housewife lifestyle instead of working their arse off to climb a career ladder Having babies is their excuse to give up and then they dare complain top shot positions at work are filled by men Oh so wrong It has nothing to do with motivation let alone innate It has to do with men having been let down As I say earlier a lot has been done to empower women and give them incentives to succeed at school first on the marketplace then It worked Sadly nothing has been done to balance this by supporting men to participate in their household Why? Well here's another field where men are being expendable in societies that are GDP friendly than family friendly men keep being perceived and valued as paycheues over being fathers and husbands This is why paternity leaves are ridiculously short compared to maternity leaves I don't know in the USA where the author is from but in the UK where I live paternity leaves are two weeks only This is why as a result women end up staying at home not by choice but by necessity Roy F Baumeister had here the floor to make a compelling argument had he wished to here's the evidence that culture indeed exploits men by reducing them as sole producers providers and paycheues He could have pointed out that ironically women pay the price He could have make a compelling argument for measures to be implemented in order to reach a compromise between gender measures which like the ones that had allowed women to step up onto the marketplace would allow men to step up into their household After all in countries where paternity leaves matches maternity leaves women DO have successful careers and men's careers are not affected But he doesn't Instead sexist as he is he just sees women not motivated enough to work themselves to the top and so not being worthy of being at the top in the first place His dismissal is blunt Were he to be taken seriously women would see decades of hard fought battles and progress for social justice snatched away from them To him indeed they are biologically geared to compete only to breed 'Female motivational resources are suited toward uality reproduction'And so we should uestion our trying to empower them to do and be otherwise 'to take privileged places and resources like education and then not use them has some cost to society also I cannot defend the decision of those parents who refused to pay for a Cornell education for their daughter nor would I refuse to work with female students simply because they might be likely than males to drop out of the field after years of training Still I can understand why a culture might produce people who have that policy From the unfeeling perspective of the system it could be worth it to restrict female access to education' What's the point of educating women indeed if as soon as they get pregnant their natural inclination they will leave it to the men to do the dirty jobs and bring in the money while they enjoy a life of comfort at home? I am not caricaturing his view As far as he is concerned women don't even contribute much to progress and innovation anyway For example 'some of the longevity enjoyed by today's women is a result of the scientific work by men not least in the improvements in the rates of surviving childbirth It would be nice if women collectively could do something eually beneficial for men something that would extend men's lives but don't bet on it'I could go on from women supposedly not being tough enough to take the rough talks and attitude of an all male workplace in other words harassment and putdowns are just misunderstanding no need to sue to men being driven brave and ambitious thanks to their innate sex drives sorry wives but cheating is in our genes I could go on but I won't This was bad Plain bad

Text å Õ Roy F. Baumeister

Have men really been engaged in a centuries old conspiracy to exploit and oppress women? Have the essential differences between men and women really been erased? Have men now become unnecessary? Are they good for anything at all?In Is There Anything Good About Men? Roy Baumeister offers provocative answers to these and many other uestions about the current state of manhood in America Baumeister argues that relations between men and women are now and have always been cooperative than antagonistic that men and women are different in basic ways and that successful cultures The title of Florida State psychologist Roy Baumeister’s book speaks to how silly much of the rhetoric surrounding the gender debate has become Dare I suggest that both sexes are good? We don’t need our men to be like women nor our women to be like men Both sexes need each other for who they are Someone had to write this book and I’m glad that Baumeister had the audacity and tenure needed to do so To put it simply this is hands down the best book on gender differences I’ve ever readRead the rest of my review of Is There Anything Good About Men? here

Roy F. Baumeister Õ Epub

Is There Anything Good about Men Capitalize on these differences to outperform rival cultures Amongst our ancestors as with many other species only the alpha males were able to reproduce leading them to take risks and to exhibit aggressive and protective behaviors than women whose evolutionary strategies reuired a different set of behaviors Whereas women favor and excel at one to one intimate relationships men compete with one another and build larger organizations and social networks from which culture grows But cultures in turn exploit men by insisting that their role is to achieve and produce to pr I read this book because I thought the title was intriguing I thought it could have been a great book about how men are socialized to be exploited or that American or Western Culture produces men that are expendable and exploitable so that it can flourish I thought the book could have been great Instead the book is a 300 page argument with an imaginary feminist It was lazy The author even said so in the back of the book He said that if he was writing this book to be taken seriously he would have had research to back up his claims Essentially what the author does is take common misconceptions about gender differences and points out the biases in the arguments the statistical discrepancies that either are used to show men as oppressors or women as champions He will then make his conclusions based on those corrected discrepancies Probably the weakest part of the book is that he spends so much time defeating the imaginary feminist that he doesn't actually back up his conclusions or really dig deep into the issues at hand I do not accept that women earn less on average simply because they don't desire to work as hard as men I could accept the premise if there was a deeper exploration of the issue Why are women less motivated? Why are men ? It isn't biological like the author would have you believe My biggest fear is that people who do not have much background into gender issues would read this book and be convinced that the author has made good points The only people I would recommend this book to social scientists who want to practice tearing apart arguments or playing devils advocate with hard core feminists