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I deliberately stopped reading this and left the reading group for it. The points in here can be summarized as “respect and prioritize your own needs and boundaries” and “stand up for yourself.” This book does have the decent point that sometimes that means prioritizing your needs over those of others, which is a valid and useful thing for “nice guys” to hear, but much like so much of Jordan Peterson’s advice, the sensible basic concepts are couched in so much awful, poorly contextualized, needlessly gendered boomer bullshit that it’s actively harmful.
This book isn’t about men vs women, it’s about general emotional intelligence and self-preservation in the face of those that may take advantage of kindness, as well as breaking out of the “transactional relationship” mindset. That’s it. Instead, we get endless anecdotal conjecture with absolutely no logic to back it up outside of wildly problematic perspectives on things like anti-war protests and feminism.
For example, the author posits that the American youth of the Vietnam War era simply “didn’t understand” why the conflict couldn’t be resolved without guns and violence because they were too detached from their masculinity after being raised by women. There were SO MANY REASONS to be against the Vietnam war, from the new level of journalistic coverage to the civilian casualties to the questionable reasons for the Americans being there in the first place (for starters), but the author reduces it to “after all of the men died in WW2 and FEMINISM became a thing, too many men of the time were just super pussified, bro. We’ve gotta get back to our ROOTS.”
Even if you’re able to set aside the questionable logic and flagrant misogyny and closed-mindedness that the book pushes, what little value that the book has is still questionable because while some more timid and emotionally mixed up man may benefit, someone who’s already an asshole could read it and use the logic within to justify being a selfish prick with no regard for rules or the needs of others.
I stopped after chapter 6 because chapter 7 is “success strategies for intimate relationships.” No way in hell am I going to subject myself to intimacy advice from this blowhard. This book is toxic garbage and has its head completely up its own ass. There are better ways to do this.
This book isn’t about men vs women, it’s about general emotional intelligence and self-preservation in the face of those that may take advantage of kindness, as well as breaking out of the “transactional relationship” mindset. That’s it. Instead, we get endless anecdotal conjecture with absolutely no logic to back it up outside of wildly problematic perspectives on things like anti-war protests and feminism.
For example, the author posits that the American youth of the Vietnam War era simply “didn’t understand” why the conflict couldn’t be resolved without guns and violence because they were too detached from their masculinity after being raised by women. There were SO MANY REASONS to be against the Vietnam war, from the new level of journalistic coverage to the civilian casualties to the questionable reasons for the Americans being there in the first place (for starters), but the author reduces it to “after all of the men died in WW2 and FEMINISM became a thing, too many men of the time were just super pussified, bro. We’ve gotta get back to our ROOTS.”
Even if you’re able to set aside the questionable logic and flagrant misogyny and closed-mindedness that the book pushes, what little value that the book has is still questionable because while some more timid and emotionally mixed up man may benefit, someone who’s already an asshole could read it and use the logic within to justify being a selfish prick with no regard for rules or the needs of others.
I stopped after chapter 6 because chapter 7 is “success strategies for intimate relationships.” No way in hell am I going to subject myself to intimacy advice from this blowhard. This book is toxic garbage and has its head completely up its own ass. There are better ways to do this.