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veganhitchhiker's review against another edition
3.0
Presenting some great takes, with copious walk to back up the talk.
joy_davis's review against another edition
4.0
Still great on re-read. Appreciated the updated forward. Think it could benefit from an abridged version, for some audiences.
... Also, it was capitalism all along!!
... Also, it was capitalism all along!!
faryewing's review against another edition
3.0
Loooong book taking an in-depth look at what it means to be male in America. Susan explores the huge Promise Keepers movement, the decline of industry, why men identify so strongly and are so loyal to sports organization and the impact on men when these organizations sell-out and move to other cities. She looks at gender relations and examines the shifts in roles and division of responsibilities and adresses domestic violence. She does all of this objectively and with and understanding of the unique challenges facing modern man. An interesting, but rather academic read.
omikun's review against another edition
5.0
An insightful book on how different sorts of men try to regain their lost connections to their fathers and by extension their manhood. It's enlightening to see how these efforts can manifest in such a broad spectrums of toxic masculinity. From being in a gang, making headlines, being a movie star, they're all ways people try to find what it means to be a man. At the same time the different work cultures, working in a shipyard where there's a labor union and a community that fosters connections across generation to aerospace engineers converted to ornamental feminism, show how traditional masculinity is stripped away by corporate greed towards industrial optimization that strips the humanity from workplace for profit at the expense of society and the connective tissue that binds people together.
This was one long book but I'm glad I made it to the end.
This was one long book but I'm glad I made it to the end.
katec9999's review
4.0
Even if you already read this book, it's worth it to check it out for the new foreword in this edition.
its_kievan's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
Incredibly confronting in a way that’s unlike any other book I’ve read. A lot of that comes down to Faludi’s careful balancing act, neither demonising male aggression as spontaneous hatred nor excusing it as the inevitable result of a troubled upbringing. Not only that, but she’s brilliant and drawing a massive array of case studies together into a cohesive whole. Given how time- and space-specific her focus is, the book itself is almost universally applicable. 20 years after it was published, and half a world away, Stiffed still hit me like a freight train.
bluejayreads's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
4.0
If you read Susan Faludi’s book Backlash and asked, “What about the men?” fear not – there’s a book for you, too. That book is Stiffed, and it explores why men these days are so angry.
And from everything she talks about in this book, I understand. Even though this book discusses some of the horrible things men do out of their anger, overall it inspired a lot of compassion in me. Susan is vocally a feminist, and this was a balanced book in that it holds a great compassion and understanding for the plight of men in modern society while maintaining that what’s hurting these men is not women getting more rights but a system that is also rigged against them, just in different ways.
This book is over two decades old. Some of it aged well, some of it didn’t. The research she did into the Promise Keepers Christian men’s group felt like it could have been done just a few months ago. Other topics felt severely outdated. Though some Gen X men appear in analyses of some topics, most of this book focuses on the Baby Boomer generation. Susan describes them as raised by parents who lived through WWII in the era of post-war prosperity and who faced the Vietnam War and its associated draft. My parents were five years old when the Vietnam War ended. This generation is my grandparents’ generation. Though it was an interesting look at the circumstances surrounding Baby Boomers’ rise to adulthood, I have to wonder how relevant it is to the men of my and my parents’ generations.
The main ideas in this book seem to be that men are disconnected – from their own emotions, from deep connections with other men, from their fathers, and from a feeling of competence and mastery – and that manhood in the modern world is largely ornamental. Men are forced into ever-more-unattainable roles by the forces of marketing and consumerism. Being a man is no longer about doing but about appearing – the male role has shifted from producer to consumer. There’s an undercurrent of the idea that masculinity is about doing things with your hands, and I don’t know how accurate that is, but the idea of image-based “ornamental masculinity” seems spot-on.
I do wish Susan had either spent more time on the effects of technology in the updated prologue or added an updated epilogue as well. She uses the examples of aspiring male porn stars and men’s magazines to discuss the emphasis on image and appearance for men, and I would really like to know how social media and the rise of the Instagram influencer has affected those trends.
I want to keep talking about the different topics in this book, because even the parts that didn’t seem particularly relevant to 2022 (or relevant to anything – a good two hours in audiobook time was spent on a detailed history of the Cleveland Browns) were interesting. I can sometimes lose patience with a 10-hour audiobook, but this 30-hour monstrosity took me three work days to finish and had me engaged the whole time. Even the parts that seem specific to the 1990s are fascinating.
Part of me wishes Susan would fully update the contents of this book for the 2020s. However, the more realistic part of me recognizes that for her to cover everything relevant, she’d basically need to rewrite the entire book. As awesome as I think that would be, it’s a lot to ask. In the meantime, there’s still a lot to be gained from Stiffed and it is absolutely worth the read.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Misogyny and War
Moderate: Violence, Infidelity, and Domestic abuse
Minor: Rape and Sexual content
Sex work, fundamentalist Christian patriarchylivewisdom's review against another edition
4.0
I am going to seek out more authors like Faludi. She takes her time 'embedding' herself with subjects and interviewing them over a longer period of time. It adds a depth and realism to the stories, and creates more room for the reader to sympathize and relate to their journeys.
There is a lot of good food for thought in this book. It wasn't an easy read. Though the main points could have been presented in a much shorter book, I was drawn in and enjoyed the stories of the men she interviewed and researched.
There is a lot of good food for thought in this book. It wasn't an easy read. Though the main points could have been presented in a much shorter book, I was drawn in and enjoyed the stories of the men she interviewed and researched.
sdbecque's review against another edition
4.0
I don't know what to say, but this book is awesome. My professor handed it to me and told me to read it, and it's a dense 600 something pages, but it's just a wonderfully researched, searing indictment of the culture, the crisis of masculinity and the search for what it means to be a man. I don't truck with all those white men calling themselves the oppressed minority, like even a little, but this book offered a compelling counter-story to that narrative. The blame is not on women, but something has happened to traditional forms of masculinity, which is tied up in all sorts of factors. I don't know, I can't recommend this book enough to people, it looks long but it's so good.
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