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ruthlezz_'s review
Got sick and did not finish for social justice book club at work
catm222's review against another edition
reflective
slow-paced
3.0
Je DNF ce livre à un peu plus de la moitié. Je trouve le thème intéressant et pertinent, mais la façon dont il est exploité ne me plait pas. Je trouve que l’autrice tourne trop en rond dans ses propos, et j’ai l’impression que plusieurs idées sont avancées sans être réellement fondées. Je crois que ce livre aurait pu contenir 150 pages de moins.
bradyt53's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
erinlcrane's review against another edition
3.0
This landed in “fine” territory for me. Part of it is the timing of it because I’ve read more in-depth, theoretical works on gender and misogyny at this point. This feels shallow in comparison, but I think it’s probably good for the intended audience. I think it’s meant to be an accessible work for people who haven’t considered gender and masculinity at a deeper level before, or haven’t read up on it yet. The light jokey tone was driving me crazy sometimes, but I think that was part of the attempt to be accessible.
Initially she was striking a good balance between anecdote and study for me, but that kind of falls apart in the last few chapters. I do not understand the purpose of the Zambia chapter at all! And in the last chapter she touches on what masculinity could be or should be, but not nearly enough to do anything with.
Putting my stylistic frustrations aside - she highlights a lot of good information. Some takeaways:
1) I’d already read a book which challenges the way we view testosterone, but I appreciated her point that testosterone rises in response to what men have been socially conditioned to view as a threat. That’s changeable.
2) Men /perceive/ less threat/danger/risk and act accordingly. It’s not that they see the danger accurately and disregard it.
3) I’ve wondered if employment issues for men weren’t at least partly because of the type of work available - and the answer is yes. There are men who just aren’t open to doing the type of jobs available. I don’t think she mentions it, but there’s presumably a hiring bias along the same lines so it’s a bit of a conundrum.
I just wish I had come away with more of a framework, a theory, with a detailed proposed solution - and less of a jumble of ideas and data.
Initially she was striking a good balance between anecdote and study for me, but that kind of falls apart in the last few chapters. I do not understand the purpose of the Zambia chapter at all! And in the last chapter she touches on what masculinity could be or should be, but not nearly enough to do anything with.
Putting my stylistic frustrations aside - she highlights a lot of good information. Some takeaways:
1) I’d already read a book which challenges the way we view testosterone, but I appreciated her point that testosterone rises in response to what men have been socially conditioned to view as a threat. That’s changeable.
2) Men /perceive/ less threat/danger/risk and act accordingly. It’s not that they see the danger accurately and disregard it.
3) I’ve wondered if employment issues for men weren’t at least partly because of the type of work available - and the answer is yes. There are men who just aren’t open to doing the type of jobs available. I don’t think she mentions it, but there’s presumably a hiring bias along the same lines so it’s a bit of a conundrum.
I just wish I had come away with more of a framework, a theory, with a detailed proposed solution - and less of a jumble of ideas and data.
lailams's review
informative
4.0
Good book - If you're online a lot in the right feminist spaces, and you feel like you already know a decent amount about men's issue, the loneliness epidemic, toxic masculinity, etc., you probably won't get any groundbreaking realizations from this book, but I did enjoy it. There were several tidbits that supplemented my existing understanding and that was cool. The tone was very down to earth and understandable - loved that! However, it feels like the audience for this book is women who want to help the men in their lives, not necessarily the men themselves. I.e., if there's a man in your life that subscribes to a high level of toxic masculinity and normally disregards conversations that critique masculinity in any way, they're going to completely disregard this book too. It starts out already assuming that the reader is open to learning about why toxic masculinity is bad, so unless the man is already willing to unlearn their mental habits, the book is more for the people around them. I also doesn't touch a lot on how we can have productive conversations with people who's mind we want to change too. It gives us lots of data and reasons why we should believe x, y and z, but there are minimal conversation tips on how to change men's minds. Otherwise, a very decent read and a very good deep dive into the topic of how feminism helps every gender, not just cis women.