Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women | 
|  | | | Title: | Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women | | Author: | Susan Faludi | | Publisher: | Three Rivers Press | | Type: | Book / Paperback | | Publication Date: | 15 August, 2006 | | ISBN / ISBN-13: | 0307345424 / 9780307345424 | | List Price: | $14.95 | | You Save: | $4.78 | | Amazon Price: | $10.17 | |
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Product Description
Skillfully Probing the Attack on Women’s Rights
“Opting-out,” “security moms,” “desperate housewives,” “the new baby fever”—the trend stories of 2006 leave no doubt that American women are still being barraged by the same backlash messages that Susan Faludi brilliantly exposed in her 1991 bestselling book of revelations. Now, the book that reignited the feminist movement is back in a fifteenth anniversary edition, with a new preface by the author that brings backlash consciousness up to date.
When it was first published, Backlash made headlines for puncturing such favorite media myths as the “infertility epidemic” and the “man shortage,” myths that defied statistical realities. These willfully fictitious media campaigns added up to an antifeminist backlash. Whatever progress feminism has recently made, Faludi’s words today seem prophetic. The media still love stories about stay-at-home moms and the “dangers” of women’s career ambitions; the glass ceiling is still low; women are still punished for wanting to succeed; basic reproductive rights are still hanging by a thread. The backlash clearly exists.
With passion and precision, Faludi shows in her new preface how the creators of commercial culture distort feminist concepts to sell products while selling women downstream, how the feminist ethic of economic independence is twisted into the consumer ethic of buying power, and how the feminist quest for self-determination is warped into a self-centered quest for self-improvement. Backlash is a classic of feminism, an alarm bell for women of every generation, reminding us of the dangers that we still face.
Amazon.com Review
A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Wall Street Journal, Faludi lays out a two-fold thesis in this aggressive work: First, despite the opinions of pop-psychologists and the mainstream media, career-minded women are generally not husband-starved loners on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Secondly, such beliefs are nothing more than anti-feminist propaganda pumped out by conservative research organizations with clear-cut ulterior motives. This backlash against the women's movement, she writes, "stands the truth boldly on its head and proclaims that the very steps that have elevated women's positions have actually led to their downfall." Meticulously researched, Faludi's contribution to this tumultuous debate is monumental and it earned the 1991 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction.
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Customer Reviews:
• A Woman Sick Of Feminist Nonsense 11 April, 2008
Like most feminists, she presumes to speak for all women and to know what is best for us even when many of us differ. I guess since I didn't go to Harvard I'm not smart enough to know that equality of the type she favors would lead to a miserable marriage and life. Homemaking and motherhood give meaning and joy to most women. Taking care of and pampering a husband and children is the most pleasurable part of a woman's life. She conveniently ignores studies that indicate relationships are were women find success and self-fulfillment while men more often find it in careers. I am not distressed or despairing that I do more house cleaning and child rearing than my husband despite the fact that I work outside the home, too.
Faludi equates criticism of feminism with attacks on women in general. Like most feminists, they try to dominate the landscape with their ideas and present feminism and women's well being as one in the same.
As an educated woman, I am so sick of tomes like this book essentially whining that if you do not believe a woman is equivalent to a man in every way you are a misogynist. Perhaps I am a female misogynist then because the ambitious, career path is not good for most women. Motherhood and marriage are where most of us are most happy. It is only a few women with a chip on their shoulder that feel the need to compete with men in the boardroom(and then blame the men when the women come up short.)
*She doesn't like and so tries to dismiss the fact that men do not often want to marry career oriented women who are past 30 or so. They simply are most likely to be attracted to youthful, sweet, uncompetitive, nurturing, family oriented feminine women for wives. You can castigate men for this fact of nature or deal with the inherent gender differences and make the best of it.
*She disregards the well established fact women's fertility sharply decreases with age. Therefore, if you want kids it really is smart to pursue motherhood instead of a career during those years. She seems to think this represents another instance of men holding women down. Blame God or mother nature but men have no control over this fact.
*She also seems to accept the myth that most men have(now and historically) fulfilling careers as opposed to jobs they don't like but need to support a family. Most career women work in specific jobs for personal fulfillment. You won't see them competing with men in coal mines, sewers and on the front line of battlefields(thank goodness for this one as we'd lose any war with female infantry - the IDF tried this already and it failed.)
*Men need their clubs, offices, golf course, mountain fishing streams, and woods as a refuge for masculine activities away from women. It is were they can safely be rough, and aggressive and dangerous without women getting in the way or being offended. Faludi seems to feel this is an attack on women rather than a natural expression of masculinity.
*Women are anything but silenced in this society. As evidenced by the constant blatherings about feelings and personal details aired in public on television, online and in print media. Blaming men for female problems is common and acceptable.
*She ignores the fact that many working class women would never consider what they do a "career" but rather a necessity.
*Women did have a better deal when they "stayed home" despite her claims otherwise. Freidan found a few whiners for whom life would never meet their great expectations and founded a movement just their spoiled selves. Faludi ignores the fact that historically, lower class women generally worked outside the home and would have given anything for the ability to stay home and raise their kids and cook and clean for their own loved ones. Perhaps the fact that Ms Faludi never had children makes her incapable of understanding that daycare cannot and should not replace parental guidance and most mothers don't want it that way. Perhaps her privileged upbringing makes her incapable of counting her many blessings as an upper middle class American woman.
* She writes of women expressing themselves in painting for example and views expressing oneself in the way you raise your kids or relate to your husband as meaningless. Feminists need to face the facts that they cannot make most women embrace spinsterhood and childlessness.
Masculine men and feminine women complement each other. Men cannot be socially engineered into wanting a society dominated by masculine women and effeminate men. I cannot be socially engineered to view motherhood and marriage as second seat to a profession.
And we are the people actually breeding. So thankfully, I don't see a feminist utopia in the future!
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3OVUS1N8AEVDK
• Not What It's Cracked Up To Be 19 March, 2008
Susan Faludi's "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women" clearly doesn't live up to its title. Despite its reputation, it is rife with obvious instances of cherry picking and the omission of well-known facts that would undermine the case she is trying to make. For example, she paints Republican administrations as being totally antithetical to the ambitions of women but omits any mention of Reagan's appointment of Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court or the fact that the first Bush administration had twice as many women in it as Carter's. She also fails to mention numerous examples of feminist misinformation that were ballyhooed by the mainstream media during the supposed era of backlash such as the Super Bowl Sunday domestic violence hoax or the clearly false claim that one in four women are destined to be rape victims (73% of the supposed victims in the Koss study not only denied that they had been raped, half went on to have further sex with their supposed assailants). And she clearly practices many of the faults she so vigorously chides in others. For example, Faludi bitterly complains that an article about a Shere Hite study mentions her having punched a cab driver on the grounds that such personal attacks are irrelevant to her work. This does not prevent Faludi, when criticizing some of Betty Freidan's ideas from telling a completely gratuitous story about her having been appallingly rude to a fan.
But, more to the point, Faludi so-called "war against women" overwhelmingly consists of people who simply don't toe the feminist line. Faludi is right that there was no mass movement of women abandoning careers in order to "cocoon" in the safety of their homes. But she fails to demonstrate evil intent or effect. It's simply a case of lazy reporting and a few self-important twits confusing their own preconceived notions with factual reality--the latter being a crime of which feminists can hardly claim innocence. Some of her examples are laughable as when she gets put out over the fact that Victoria's Secret, a company in the business of selling fancy underwear, mounts a PR campaign trying to convince reporters that women are "choosing" to spend their hard earned dollars wearing expensive and uncomfortable undies that most people will never get to see. Oh, the horror.
Some of her complaints are downright bizarre. She cites the film "The Accused," about the horrific public rape of a woman in a bar in New Bedford, Massachusetts, that dozens of people watched without intervening, as being part of the backlash on the grounds that the film made the woman being raped look like a victim (!). Faludi's logic is that there were already too many movies that year in which women were portrayed as victims but, really, if you can't make an anti-rape movie without being accused of warring against women then perhaps it's time to take another look at this whole barefoot and pregnant stuff. As Superintendent Chalmers on "The Simpsons" so sagely put it: In for a dime. In for a dollar.
Another problem with the concept of there being a "war against women" is that fully half of the enemies cited by Faludi are themselves women. That's sort of like calling our own Civil War the "War Against America."
And despite all her cherry picking, Faludi doesn't seem to recognize when her own facts subvert the case she is trying to make.
Her section on George Gilder is one of the minority of places where Faludi gets her hands on someone who is unambiguously trying to put women back in the kitchen (though she typically fails to mention that Time magazine, one of the organs she lumps among the baddies, named him the "Male Chauvinist Pig of the Year"). As far as Guilder is concerned, the whole point of being a woman is to help men achieve their potential, even when their potential isn't anything to write home about and may even be nonexistent.
In another part of the book she describes the work of Robin Norwood a therapists who came up with the idea that women in bad relationships are addicted to them and it's basically their own fault if their lives suck never mind the brutes they're living with. These women go to twelve-step like meetings run by women therapists where they blame themselves about how rotten their lives are without any sort of useful feedback--and pay good money to ensure that they remain stuck in the same sink hole.
But there are a couple of problems here. The first is that, again, there isn't anything in the book to indicate that Norwood or her fellow therapists are anything but sincerely deluded. Yes, what they are doing is harmful but that doesn't change the fact that they're honestly trying to help. It's just desperate people being stupid.
But here's the capper: The most books Gilder ever sold according to Faludi was 30,000. Norwood's book, also according to Faludi, has sold over twenty million copies. It isn't like Norwood had some evil marketing scheme to get legions of women into bad, self-defeating therapy. She sincerely decided she was on to something that managed to strike a nerve with millions of women who seized onto this nefarious malarkey. What Faludi has actually demonstrated is that an appallingly large number of women are willing to voluntarily hurt themselves and that no patriarchal backlash is required.
Faludi's book, like Ann Coulter's "Slander," was lavishly praised by the very institutions she was attacking. Obviously, then, they're both right.
BTW, I notice that my highly detailed, fact-based review is so far being rated as unhelpful by a 3-to-1 margin. Who says that feminists are bad about taking criticism?
- Reviewed by customer ID: A1GE885VBV8ANZ
• Witty And Aggressive! But Still A Few Things To Criticize. 01 September, 2008
I have read this book over five times, and absolutely love it for its wit, humor and incredible investigative sharpness. There are things about the book I love, and things about the book I disagree with, but overall, Faludi has written a book that has kept people talking for almost twenty years.
For all its faults, this book is remarkably well written, and, at times, quite humorous and witty. I love the sections in which she visits someone's home or office, and then shows them as the hypocrites that they are. For example, when she goes to the concerned women for america office, and speaks with the director, who says (from behind her rolodex and huge mahogany desk) that work is bad for women. And then faludi interviews all the other women in the office, who say that they love to work and would never want to leave their positions! Its amazing. Or when she goes to Michael Levin's house, who states in his book that girls are genetically bad at math, and boys genetically hate to cook and clean, and discovers that Michael's wife is a Math professor and that Michael cooks and cleans a lot. You just cant help but laugh and say "You go girl." Because, let's face it, some of these people really need to be shown for the hypocrites that they are.
I also really enjoy the beginning of the book, where she debunks the 80's myths of man shortages, and day care abuse. It is a wonderful section for a journalism student to read, because she does a remarkable job of showing how low the standards are right now... For example, for the Harvard-Yale man shortage study, it was disturbing to find out that such a widely quoted study was actually unpublished, and had found its way into the paper through a newly hired, local paper reporter, who actually was quoted as saying "if it's a study from a good school, we just put it in the paper." In other words, no one bothered to question its validity, which Faludi proves is suspect.
Faludi does fall short, however, in the media section. She really speaks in generalities here, and reads into things way too much, criticizing tv shows and movies that really aren't anti-women. For example, she says the golden girls was not an asset to women because the women are normally filmed in their home. This, to anyone who has watched the show, is a ridiculous assertion. Furthermore, she falls briefly into the trap of so many "women's studies" writers by stating interpretations without backing them up with facts. This section really stands out as mediocre, in comparison to the rest of the book which is so well researched.
Finally, Faludi clearly has an agenda, and she interprets and chooses her statistics based on what will help prove her thesis. It is something that is done all the time, but one cant help but wonder if there are numbers out there being left out in order to enhance her argument.
And in the end, despite the brilliant research and incredible writing, she can't say that she speaks for all women. The feminist movement of late (although it is finally changing) has been obsessed with "men are the bad guys, women all want to work, etc.." and it jsut isnt appealing to everybody. No matter how strong the research is, she still, in the end, suggests that men in a back room are creating all of these problems for women, which is clearly absured.
Of all the feminist texts (of which there are a ton of badly written/researched ones) this is by far the best. It is interesting, well done, and worth your time.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3PCFDI78SEZIQ
• A More Likeable Elizabeth Wurtzel? 19 November, 2007
I found this book interesting and well written, but maybe a bit over the top. Listening to Ms. Faludi's recent interview on [...], she's an intelligent and likeable person. She's also not afraid to tell you what she thinks...for a good 500 pages. This is an apparently well researched book, but not being a scholar of feminism, I can't place it in its proper historical context. She seems to be trying to get a reaction out of people, however, with a bit of shock value, and I thought a journalist wasn't supposed to do that? It's fun to draw a comparison between Ms. Faludi and Elizabeth Wurtzel, who's the author of Prozac Nation and other controversial books. The two women: are similar in age, are Harvard graduates trained in journalism, are dare I say attractive, do not censor their speech (or at least their writings), seem to enjoy getting a reaction out of people, probably have plenty of detractors (Wurtzel certainly does), are feminists (slightly more overtly in the case of Ms. Faludi), had hugely successful books at a young age. Maybe the two are friends! Author of Adjust Your Brain: A Practical Theory for Maximizing Mental Health.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3QFUK8BCO9IMO
• A Call For Feminazis To Unite 07 August, 2008
Poor Miss Faludi can't even avoid being disingenuous in the title of this book. The deserved "Backlash" isn't against REAL American women, it's always been against her ilk, the male-hating, male-bashing, radical feminazis who just never seem to get it. She "finds evidence" for her assertions because that's what she's driven to prove despite reality...poor, unfortunate cognitive dissonance.
- Reviewed by customer ID: A3FZEMQR6O1D8Q
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