Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, July 27, 1993 TAG: 9307270112
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Neil Chethik
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
In fact, it is both.
Men's rightists have desperately needed a legitimized spokesperson. Led mostly by divorced men who have lost custody of their children, this extremist element of the men's movement has foundered in recent years because of its seething anti-woman rhetoric.
Listen, for example, to Kenneth Pangborn of Florida's Men International: "Women better wake up. Their mouths are 100 percent responsible for the rise of rapes in America. And the real backlash is still coming. Make no mistake who is going to win in the end."
Farrell - a former leader in the women's movement who renounced feminism a decade ago - distances himself from the woman-haters. With a gentle voice and legions of statistics, he argues that both men and women are victims of "a bisexist world" in which both genders are forced into narrow, unhealthy sex roles.
Men's role as the protector of women - a role most women still encourage, he says - has made men reticent to confront feminists, Farrell believes. Thus, he concludes, the gender debate has become a one-sided affair that now threatens the very lives of men.
"Have we been misled by feminists? Yes," writes Farrell, who turns 50 this year. "Is it feminists' fault? No. Why not? Men have not spoken up. Simply stated, women cannot hear what men do not say."
So Farrell, the author of two best-selling books on gender, gets talking. And he starts by redefining power. Where feminists see power as control of government and other institutions, Farrell says power really means "having control over one's own life." By that measure, he contends, most men have very little of it.
Some of his evidence:
Men live seven fewer years than women.
Men are more often victims of crime.
Men hold the jobs with the highest death rates.
Men serve more prison time for the same crimes.
Men rarely have the option of staying home with their children.
Only men can be drafted into combat.
While some of his claims are questionable, Farrell, who calls himself a "masculist," offers a generally convincing case that men are a "disposable sex." And he also puts out a spirited rejoinder to the women's rights agenda, which he believes has gone too far.
Where feminists argue for more legal defenses for battered women, Farrell says laws already encourage women to "exercise the death penalty" against their abusive husbands or boyfriends.
Where feminists support longer sentences for rapists, Farrell calls for equally long sentences for women who falsely accuse men of rape.
And he gets especially vehement about sexual harassment charges, which he says can destroy men who simply misjudge a woman's sexual signals. Women still demand that men initiate sexual contact, he says. "When it works, it's called courtship. When it doesn't, it's called harassment."
None of this is particularly new. But Farrell's anti-feminist argument is likely to sell well to men because it's melded with a rare understanding of one of men's key frustrations: being demonized as wife-beaters, child-molesters, dead-beat dads and the like.
In his exuberance to defend men, however, Farrell sometimes loses perspective. Opening a chapter on sexual harassment, for example, he makes the groundless generalization that "If a woman at work caressed a man on his rear, he'd thank her, not sue her."
Later, he equates a man losing his job to a woman being raped. Such a comparison adds to the pain of rape victims while doing little to explore the unique sense of valuelessness that unemployed men often experience.
Despite Farrell's extensive academic credentials, his book - like Faludi's "Backlash" (Anchor, $12.50) - is not a scholarly work. It is flagrantly one-sided, a deft compilation of all the statistics and anecdotes that bolster Farrell's view of men-as-victim-too.
Farrell says this approach is necessary to balance the weapons available to each side in the gender war. By offering such a balance, he says, his book can help constructive peace talks begin. He's dreaming. This book is certain to raise the body count.
\ MEN-TION\ \ Average prison sentences (in months):\ OFFENSE MALE FEMALE\ Rape 159 117\ Aggravated assault 83 49\ Burglary 66 46\ Larceny 48 36\ Source: U.S. Department of Justice, 1987\ \ MALE CALL
Men: Have you ever personally experienced discrimination on the basis of your gender? What happened? Women: Do you think men are also victims of discrimination?
Send responses, questions and comments to The Men's Column, in care of the Features Department, Roanoke Times & World-News, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke, Va. 24010-2491.
by CNB