The American Spectator

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p> strong> Save the Males: Why Men Matter and Women Should Care br> By Kathleen Parker br> (Random House, 240 pages, $26) /strong> /p>

AFTER READING a half dozen tomes on the American male, here's what I know. Men are lost, self-destructive and need saving. Except for the patriarchy, which still dominates society and keeps women second-class citizens. Girls are short-changed at school. Boys are short-changed at school. Which way you lean probably depends largely on which chromosomes you carry.

Kathleen Parker is an exception. To Ms. Parker, author of Save the Males: Why Men Matter and Women Should Care, pretty much all of men's problems are a result of a misguided radical feminism. Feminism has neutered men and deprived them of their noble, protective role in society, and she is on a mission to reverse this metaphorical mass castration no matter the cost: "When I tell my women friends that I want to save the males, they look at me as if noticing for the first time that I am insane. Then they say something like: 'Are you out of your mind? This is still a male-dominated world. It's women who need saving. Screw the men!'"

If feminists continue to view women as victims, martyrs, mystics or saints, men are similarly cast in multiple roles. One view is that the male is a cold fish, narcissistic, averse to the responsibilities of fatherhood, though happy to spread his seed far and wide. Ms. Parker's males, by contrast, are "domesticated to within an inch of their lives, attending Lamaze classes, counting contractions, bottling expressed breast milk for midnight feedings....The exemplar of the modern male is the hairless, metrosexualised man and decorator boys who turn heterosexual slobs into perfumed ponies." Undoubtedly such men exist, but the real problem adults are not Parker's maligned metrosexuals, but the deadbeat dads, the absentee fathers, the misogynistic hip-hoppers, and the adult male children who populate the kindergarchy. And to blame feminism for their behavior seems to me to be taking a page from the liberal playbook and the height of irresponsibility.

But not even I think today's male could have sunk to such depths without the helping hand of government, our toxic pop culture, and female enablers. Parker, too, is ready with her own roll of usual suspects. Topping the list is radical feminism, which has elevated "single motherhood from an unfortunate consequence of poor planning to a sophisticated act of self-fulfillment." Maybe, but I doubt motherhood, at least for many rural or inner city girls, is a sophisticated act of self-fulfillment. It is rather a rite of passage and a way to collect government handouts.

p>Parker is much more on the mark when she talks of the effect on men of the kindergarchy: br> /p>

We've managed over the past 20 years or so to create a new generation of child-men, perpetual adolescents who see no point in growing up. By indulging every appetite instead of recognizing the importance of self-control and commitment, we've ratified the id...Our society's young men encounter little resistance against continuing to celebrate juvenile pursuits, losing themselves in video games and mindless, "guy-oriented" TV fare -- and casual sex. The casual sex culture prevalent on university campuses -- and even in schools -- has produced fresh vocabulary to accommodate new ways of relating: "friends with benefits" and "booty call."