2013 books: 32-34

[the_siobhan]

I'm tird of elves. I decided to move to non-fiction for a while.

    

Mismeasure of Women: Why Women are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex, Or the Opposite Sex by Carol Tavris There was a FB thing going around where you were supposed to go to the closest book and post a specific sentance from a specific page. I had just picked up The Mismeasure of Women and the line I posted was, But when Hyde and her collegues analyzed 100 studies of mathematics performance, representing the testing of 3,985,682 students, they found that gender differences were smallest and favored *females* in samples of the general population, and grew larger, favoring males, only in selected samples of preciocious individuals.

That gives you an idea of the kind of info you can find in this book. Tavris' real strength is in examining studies and pointing out where their conclusions are not based on the results, or where the conclusions are mis-reported and mis-represented by pundits with an agenda. Evidence is either repositioned or reinterpreted to "prove" that women are exactly like men or exactly the opposite of men depending on the prevailing attitude of the time. (Brain Sex, I'm looking at you.) This book came out in 1992 and I kind of wish I head read it back then. I was reading a lot of eco-feminism at the time and this might have provided a much-needed vaccination.

In an interesting moment of synchronicity I was in the middle of a chapter that talked about how truncated men's emotional lives become when the popular perception is that women are the sole keepers of caring and nurturing, and there just happend to be a conversation next to my desk between two men talking about how hard it is to be working on a remote project that is keeping them away from their newborns and how much they are looking forward to getting home.

    

BODY WARS: Making Peace with Women’s Bodies by Dr Margo Maine Dr Maine is a specialist at an eating disorders clinic, so the focus of Body Wars is the weight-cycling industry and it's effects on health; with seperate chapters for women, children, and men. She goes into other topics too, such as sexual violence, ageism, and the fashion and advertising industries. Since this is billed as being for activists each chapter is a summary of the problem followed by a list of potential activities and resources. Since this book came out in 2000 and that's centuries in Internet years, I suspect a lot of the links are dead by now.

    

Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women by Susan Faludi. When I was packing my knapsack for work this morning I remember wishing I had picked a slightly less heavy book to haul around with me for a week. Faludi's premise is that every time women's rights start to gain ground it creates an enormous societal pressure to push women to "choose" to give up their advances. She points at several periods in US history when women's economic and social gains coincided with hysterical media reports about how there was a massive man shortage for (middle-class white) women who don't get married right out of highschool and (middle-class white) women are waiting too long to have babies and we're all going to die friendless and alone and be eaten by our cats. This book was published over 20 years ago and I'm still reading crap op-ed pieces to that effect. Accompanied by much mocking in the feminist blogosphere, but still.

These were all good books for their time but they're woefully out of date so they go onto the giveaway pile. One thing I am curious about is if there has been any change in some of the stats Faludi quotes about men's reported happiness as women's status rises. My experience is that that men who have grown up in the last 20 years just assume that the women in their lives will naturally have careers and interests and independence, but I am a) not American and b) working with a small sample size, so my perception may be skewed.

I have a copy of Faludi's Stiffed kicking around here somewhere, if I can find it I might re-read that one next.

Comments

[greylock]

My experience is that that men who have grown up in the last 20 years just assume that the women in their lives will naturally have careers and interests and independence, but I am a) not American and b) working with a small sample size, so my perception may be skewed.

That is my reality too, and I move in very different circles.

[the_siobhan]

I get the impression that a lot of "women back to the kitchen" movement in the States comes from conservative religious groups. We have fewer of those in the political sphere - or they're less blatant about it in public - and I would be unlikely to interact with them anyway.

[wild_irises]

Ditto.

But it would be interesting to see the impact on the happiness stats, because I suspect everyone is happier with someone whose main priority is to take care of their daily needs.