What do you think?
Rate this book
Stiffed
Paperback
Published August 2, 1999
6 people want to read
About the author
Susan Faludi
23 books387 followersSusan C. Faludi (born April 18, 1959) is an American humanist, journalist and author. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism in 1991, for a report on the leveraged buyout of Safeway Stores, Inc., a report that the Pulitzer Prize committee commended for depicting the "human costs of high finance".
Faludi was born to a Jewish family in Queens, New York in 1959 and grew up in Yorktown Heights, New York. Her mother was a homemaker and journalist and is a long-time New York University student. Her father is a photographer who had emigrated from Hungary, a survivor of the Holocaust. Susan graduated from Harvard University in 1981, where she wrote for The Harvard Crimson, and became a journalist, writing for The New York Times, Miami Herald, Atlanta Journal Constitution, San Jose Mercury News, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Throughout the eighties she wrote several articles on feminism and the apparent resistance to the movement. Seeing a pattern emerge, Faludi wrote Backlash, which was released in late 1991. In 2008-2009, Faludi was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives with fellow author Russ Rymer. Since January 2013, Faludi has been a contributing editor at The Baffler magazine in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(from Wikipedia)
Faludi was born to a Jewish family in Queens, New York in 1959 and grew up in Yorktown Heights, New York. Her mother was a homemaker and journalist and is a long-time New York University student. Her father is a photographer who had emigrated from Hungary, a survivor of the Holocaust. Susan graduated from Harvard University in 1981, where she wrote for The Harvard Crimson, and became a journalist, writing for The New York Times, Miami Herald, Atlanta Journal Constitution, San Jose Mercury News, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Throughout the eighties she wrote several articles on feminism and the apparent resistance to the movement. Seeing a pattern emerge, Faludi wrote Backlash, which was released in late 1991. In 2008-2009, Faludi was a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She lives with fellow author Russ Rymer. Since January 2013, Faludi has been a contributing editor at The Baffler magazine in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
(from Wikipedia)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 14, 2025
AN (PERHAPS SURPRISINGLY, TO SOME) EMPATHIC VIEW OF AMERICAN MEN
Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, best known for her book ‘Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.' She wrote in the first chapter of this 1999 book, “If so many concurred in the existence of a male crisis, consensus collapsed as soon as anyone asked… Why?... As a feminist and a journalist, I began investigating this crisis … at the weekly meetings of a domestic-violence group… If male violence was the quintessential expression of masculinity run amok… then a domestic-violence therapy group must be at the very heart… In my defense, I wasn’t alone in such circular reasoning. Shortly after declaring my intention to investigate American masculinity, I was besieged with suggestions…” (Pg. 7)
She sympathetically relates many stories told to her by men, such as that of Don Motta, who “had worked as a military-contracts negotiator [at] McDonnell Douglas… Motta had watched the layoff spasms, ever more frequent and acute, closing in… What Motta dreaded most was… the telephone call to inform his wife, Gayle… The weeks and months to follow streamed by like an endlessly unreeling bad dream, He shipped out one hundred résumés… None led to a job… It took three [weekly] unemployment checks … to make his monthly mortgage. He refinanced the house. He gave up his health insurance so that he could cover his wife…. Gayle Motta would later tell me that while it might have been unfair to blame him, fear of ruin … drowned out kinder instincts… A few months after the layoff, Don Motta came home to find another man settled on the living room couch. ‘He found me attractive AND he supported me’ was Gayle’s comment on her new boyfriend; he gave her four hundred dollars a month, she said… One day, Don came home and threatened her… The boyfriend jumped in and pummeled him. Such a protective display… gave Gayle a feeling of reassurance. Just the week before, Motta said, his wife had thrown him out of the house. She had locked the … door… ‘There is no way you can feel like a man… I. Feel. I’ve. Been. Castrated.’” (Pg. 63-65)
She notes, “Where we once lived in a society in which men in particular participated by being useful in public life, we are now surrounded by a culture that encourages people to play almost no functional public roles, only decorative or consumer ones… All of the traditional domains in which men pursued authority and power---politics, religion, the military, the community, and the household---were societal. Ornamental culture has no such counterparts… the culture they live in has left men with little other territory on which to prove themselves…” (Pg. 34-35)
She continues, “the more I explored the predicament of postwar men, the more… I consider what men have lost---a useful role in public life, a way of earning a decent and reliable living, appreciation in the home, respectful treatment in the culture---the more it seems … the real question behind the ‘masculinity crisis’ … [is] not that men are fighting against women’s liberation, but that they have refused to mobilize for their own… liberation… To understand why men are so reluctant to break with the codes of manhood sanctioned in their childhood, perhaps we need to understand how strong the social constraints on them are.” (Pg. 40-41)
She says of the Promise Keepers organization/movement, “To much of the media and to many feminist groups, [their] counsel sounded suspiciously like sugar-coated instructions to place patriarchal boots on wifely necks… It didn’t help that Promise Keepers’ speakers were so fond of Saint Paul’s famed domestic stricture, ‘Wives, submit to your husbands’… And most of all it didn’t help that Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney had proved himself a dedicated foe of women’s reproductive rights…”
“But she also notes that Promise Keepers speaker and preacher Tony Evans “urged men to reject material values…turn off the TV and talk to their wives, and assured them that it was okay to cry… As an organization Promise Keepers was, in fact, replete with such contradictions… the convention stage was more often than not occupied by speakers with alarming antiabortion records and Christian Coalition affiliations… But on the field and in the bleachers, the men were not so easily categorized… What kind of help the men were getting from the stadium events was unclear… that McCartney junked a high-paying, flourishing career as a coach to spend more time with his family was unfathomable to them; most of the men in the stadium were there out of fear that their families would junk THEM because they DIDN’T have high-paying, flourishing careers.” (Pg. 228-232)
A man named Howard told her, “That’s what I learned in Promise Keepers. I learned the identity I didn’t have I could have in Christ. Jesus Christ IS my identity.” She comments, “I wasn’t sure how Howard could find his identity by modeling himself after a childless bachelor. Why was the image of Jesus paramount, instead of a seemingly more apt biblical model, like an Old Testament patriarch… or, for that matter, God the FATHER?” (Pg. 255) She argues, “Despite its pitiful calls for its members to turn off their TVs, what Promise Keepers offered its men was but another communion with the marketplace. Every path seemed to lead only to a PK Product Tent or scented bookstore.” (Pg. 259)
She summarizes, “for the many men I’ve met in researching this book, that gender battle was only a surface manifestation of other struggles. The wellsprings of their anguish… flowed through deeper channels. And so I put aside my prefigured map and set out to follow where they led… I sometimes lost sight of … that secure shore where my feminist concepts were grounded. So it was perhaps surprising… to me, that the journey men led me on ultimately led me back to feminism. With that return, I was struck all the more by how tragic it is that women and men find themselves so far apart. If my travels taught me anything about the two sexes, it is that each of our struggles depends on the success of the other’s. Men and women are at a historically opportune moment where they hold the keys to each other’s liberation.” (Pg. 594-595)
She concludes, “My travels led me to a final question: Why don’t contemporary men rise up in protest against their betrayal? If they have experienced so many of the same injuries as women, the same humiliations, why don’t they challenge the culture as women did? Why can’t men seem to act? The stock answers… don’t suffice. Men aren’t simply refusing to ‘give up the reins of power,’ as some feminists have argued. The reins have already slipped from most of their hands, anyway. Nor are men merely chary of violating sanctioned masculine codes by expressing pain and neediness… While the pressures on men to imagine themselves in power and in control of their emotions are impediments to male revolt, a more fundamental obstacle overshadows them. If men have feared to tread where women have rushed in, then maybe that’s because women have had it easier in one very simple regard: women could frame their struggle as a battle against men… And indeed, there were virulent, sexist attitudes to confront. But the 1970s model of confrontation could get feminism only half-way to its goal.” (Pg. 603)
She continues, “The male paradigm is peculiarly unsuited to mounting a challenge to men’s predicament. Men have no clearly defined enemy who is oppressing them. How can men be oppressed when the culture has already identified them as the oppressors, and when they see themselves that way… Nor do men have a clear frontier on which to challenge their intangible enemies… The male paradigm of confrontation has, in fact, proved worthless to men… [However,] There are signs that men are seeking such a breakthrough…” (Pg. 605)
This book was as controversial (though in a much different way) as her ‘Backlash’ book, but her research and journalistic skills make this a very important book for anyone studying contemporary society.
Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author, best known for her book ‘Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.' She wrote in the first chapter of this 1999 book, “If so many concurred in the existence of a male crisis, consensus collapsed as soon as anyone asked… Why?... As a feminist and a journalist, I began investigating this crisis … at the weekly meetings of a domestic-violence group… If male violence was the quintessential expression of masculinity run amok… then a domestic-violence therapy group must be at the very heart… In my defense, I wasn’t alone in such circular reasoning. Shortly after declaring my intention to investigate American masculinity, I was besieged with suggestions…” (Pg. 7)
She sympathetically relates many stories told to her by men, such as that of Don Motta, who “had worked as a military-contracts negotiator [at] McDonnell Douglas… Motta had watched the layoff spasms, ever more frequent and acute, closing in… What Motta dreaded most was… the telephone call to inform his wife, Gayle… The weeks and months to follow streamed by like an endlessly unreeling bad dream, He shipped out one hundred résumés… None led to a job… It took three [weekly] unemployment checks … to make his monthly mortgage. He refinanced the house. He gave up his health insurance so that he could cover his wife…. Gayle Motta would later tell me that while it might have been unfair to blame him, fear of ruin … drowned out kinder instincts… A few months after the layoff, Don Motta came home to find another man settled on the living room couch. ‘He found me attractive AND he supported me’ was Gayle’s comment on her new boyfriend; he gave her four hundred dollars a month, she said… One day, Don came home and threatened her… The boyfriend jumped in and pummeled him. Such a protective display… gave Gayle a feeling of reassurance. Just the week before, Motta said, his wife had thrown him out of the house. She had locked the … door… ‘There is no way you can feel like a man… I. Feel. I’ve. Been. Castrated.’” (Pg. 63-65)
She notes, “Where we once lived in a society in which men in particular participated by being useful in public life, we are now surrounded by a culture that encourages people to play almost no functional public roles, only decorative or consumer ones… All of the traditional domains in which men pursued authority and power---politics, religion, the military, the community, and the household---were societal. Ornamental culture has no such counterparts… the culture they live in has left men with little other territory on which to prove themselves…” (Pg. 34-35)
She continues, “the more I explored the predicament of postwar men, the more… I consider what men have lost---a useful role in public life, a way of earning a decent and reliable living, appreciation in the home, respectful treatment in the culture---the more it seems … the real question behind the ‘masculinity crisis’ … [is] not that men are fighting against women’s liberation, but that they have refused to mobilize for their own… liberation… To understand why men are so reluctant to break with the codes of manhood sanctioned in their childhood, perhaps we need to understand how strong the social constraints on them are.” (Pg. 40-41)
She says of the Promise Keepers organization/movement, “To much of the media and to many feminist groups, [their] counsel sounded suspiciously like sugar-coated instructions to place patriarchal boots on wifely necks… It didn’t help that Promise Keepers’ speakers were so fond of Saint Paul’s famed domestic stricture, ‘Wives, submit to your husbands’… And most of all it didn’t help that Promise Keepers founder Bill McCartney had proved himself a dedicated foe of women’s reproductive rights…”
“But she also notes that Promise Keepers speaker and preacher Tony Evans “urged men to reject material values…turn off the TV and talk to their wives, and assured them that it was okay to cry… As an organization Promise Keepers was, in fact, replete with such contradictions… the convention stage was more often than not occupied by speakers with alarming antiabortion records and Christian Coalition affiliations… But on the field and in the bleachers, the men were not so easily categorized… What kind of help the men were getting from the stadium events was unclear… that McCartney junked a high-paying, flourishing career as a coach to spend more time with his family was unfathomable to them; most of the men in the stadium were there out of fear that their families would junk THEM because they DIDN’T have high-paying, flourishing careers.” (Pg. 228-232)
A man named Howard told her, “That’s what I learned in Promise Keepers. I learned the identity I didn’t have I could have in Christ. Jesus Christ IS my identity.” She comments, “I wasn’t sure how Howard could find his identity by modeling himself after a childless bachelor. Why was the image of Jesus paramount, instead of a seemingly more apt biblical model, like an Old Testament patriarch… or, for that matter, God the FATHER?” (Pg. 255) She argues, “Despite its pitiful calls for its members to turn off their TVs, what Promise Keepers offered its men was but another communion with the marketplace. Every path seemed to lead only to a PK Product Tent or scented bookstore.” (Pg. 259)
She summarizes, “for the many men I’ve met in researching this book, that gender battle was only a surface manifestation of other struggles. The wellsprings of their anguish… flowed through deeper channels. And so I put aside my prefigured map and set out to follow where they led… I sometimes lost sight of … that secure shore where my feminist concepts were grounded. So it was perhaps surprising… to me, that the journey men led me on ultimately led me back to feminism. With that return, I was struck all the more by how tragic it is that women and men find themselves so far apart. If my travels taught me anything about the two sexes, it is that each of our struggles depends on the success of the other’s. Men and women are at a historically opportune moment where they hold the keys to each other’s liberation.” (Pg. 594-595)
She concludes, “My travels led me to a final question: Why don’t contemporary men rise up in protest against their betrayal? If they have experienced so many of the same injuries as women, the same humiliations, why don’t they challenge the culture as women did? Why can’t men seem to act? The stock answers… don’t suffice. Men aren’t simply refusing to ‘give up the reins of power,’ as some feminists have argued. The reins have already slipped from most of their hands, anyway. Nor are men merely chary of violating sanctioned masculine codes by expressing pain and neediness… While the pressures on men to imagine themselves in power and in control of their emotions are impediments to male revolt, a more fundamental obstacle overshadows them. If men have feared to tread where women have rushed in, then maybe that’s because women have had it easier in one very simple regard: women could frame their struggle as a battle against men… And indeed, there were virulent, sexist attitudes to confront. But the 1970s model of confrontation could get feminism only half-way to its goal.” (Pg. 603)
She continues, “The male paradigm is peculiarly unsuited to mounting a challenge to men’s predicament. Men have no clearly defined enemy who is oppressing them. How can men be oppressed when the culture has already identified them as the oppressors, and when they see themselves that way… Nor do men have a clear frontier on which to challenge their intangible enemies… The male paradigm of confrontation has, in fact, proved worthless to men… [However,] There are signs that men are seeking such a breakthrough…” (Pg. 605)
This book was as controversial (though in a much different way) as her ‘Backlash’ book, but her research and journalistic skills make this a very important book for anyone studying contemporary society.
Displaying 1 of 1 review