Book Review

by Sheila (30-B-2) FPE

THE AMERICAN MALE, by Myron Brenton; Coward-McCann, New York; 233 pp 12 biblio notes + 6 index; (1966) $5.95

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The subtitle "A penetrating look at the mascul- inity crisis" is quite descriptive of the contents. Brenton is not the first author to recognize the state of crisis now approaching full bloom, but his is certainly the clearest voice yet heard on the subject. Comparison with "The Feminine Mystique" and "The Second Sex" is inevitable but probably useless, as the adjustment problem of the male is not only opposite to but different in scope from that of the woman. The girls are merely trying to rise into equality; the men have the more delicate and worrisome task of climbing down from an excess- ive emminence on which their fore-fathers' false pride placed them. (Anyone who has watched a kitten learning to climb trees will appreciate the relative difficulty of descent!)

This book might almost be a sequel to"The Dan- gerous Sex" recently reviewed here, as it starts from the basis of male dislike and fear of all things feminine. It then goes on to show the damage this patriarchal attitude has done to the men themselves. In fact, the quotation at the beginning of the last chapter (VII) would have done much to enhance the earlier book. It says, in essence, that men have always feared to enter into fair competition with women as they have felt (with reason) that the only way to break even with the biologically superior sex was with a stacked deck! Again, retreat from this position will be painful, but the loss of most of the excuses for muscle-based "superiority" makes it

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