Men on Strike
Why Men Are Boycotting Marriage, Fatherhood, and the American Dream - and Why It Matters
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $20.99
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- $20.99
Publisher Description
American society has become anti-male. Men are sensing the backlash and are consciously and unconsciously going “on strike.” They are dropping out of college, leaving the workforce and avoiding marriage and fatherhood at alarming rates. The trend is so pronounced that a number of books have been written about this “man-child” phenomenon, concluding that men have taken a vacation from responsibility simply because they can. But why should men participate in a system that seems to be increasingly stacked against them?
As Men on Strike demonstrates, men aren’t dropping out because they are stuck in arrested development. They are instead acting rationally in response to the lack of incentives society offers them to be responsible fathers, husbands and providers. In addition, men are going on strike, either consciously or unconsciously, because they do not want to be injured by the myriad of laws, attitudes and hostility against them for the crime of happening to be male in the twenty-first century. Men are starting to fight back against the backlash. Men on Strike explains their battle cry.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
When W.E.B. DuBois posed the question to black America "How does it feel to be a problem?" he probably never imagined that just a little more than a century later, someone would be asking the same of male America. But that's precisely what Smith, a forensic psychologist and men's-rights activist, wonders in this incendiary, if shaky, treatise on "the crime of happening to be male in the twenty-first century." To explain why men are "going Galt" (as in John Galt, from Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged), meaning intentionally opting out of institutions like marriage and higher education, Smith blames society: "Masculinity is frowned upon and belittled in every aspect of society," the media depicts men as "goofballs and idiots" or sexual predators, and laws like Title IX and those governing child support equate to a "crackdown on... everyday college guys" and unwitting or wrongly fingered fathers. In the final pages, Smith outlines an action plan for men and their allies that includes further reading, legal advice, and information on organizations that fight for men's rights. Some of Smith's research is weak or anecdotal she relies heavily on blog comments and random men she meets at bars and in the gym but her stance is sure to incite lively debate.
