Vanity Fair’s new piece Men Evolving Badly quotes numerous authorities on modern gender issues, including Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker, authors Harvey C. Mansfield and Guy Garcia, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, and myself. It’s kind of an odd piece, for a few reasons.
One is that it focuses a lot on Rabbi Shmuley and his various discontents. I never label pro-feminist men “self-haters” or “M***ginas.” However, from my experiences as a guest on Shumley’s national radio show, it was quite apparent that he is often very hostile to men. His mantra was “men have to change”–not “men and women have to change,” of course, but “men have to change.”
But odder is the way Vanity Fair quotes Kathleen Parker and I:
“In The Decline of Men, Garcia introduces us to one of the leading fathers’-rights advocates, radio talk-show host, blogger, and columnist Glenn Sacks, who rails against the deconstructionists who minimize the importance of male parental influence, which results in a legal system that’s ’skewed against fathers maintaining a close relationship with their children’: ‘Sacks blames a social predisposition to treat men as unworthy parents, betrayers and incorrigible philanderers who have no interest in maintaining close ties to their children.’
“Ramping up the defense argument, Kathleen Parker writes in Save the Males, ‘One of the cruelest pieces of propaganda in the war against fatherhood has been the myth of the ‘deadbeat dad.’ Certainly, some fathers may be first-rate losers, but the ‘deadbeat dad’ trope has become so entrenched that all fathers are presumed low-lifes.’ She lays out a case regarding the inequities of child support and visitation rights without trying to make excuses for the real finks. ‘Those who abandon or otherwise ignore their children do not deserve our charity. But if children are, indeed, our primary concern, we might find more constructive ways to help fathers participate in their children’s lives rather than demonizing them.’”
Fair enough, but rather than dealing with the very real problems Kathleen and I cite, or even acknowledging them, Vanity Fair goes right back into men-have-everything/women-have-nothing–”Keep in mind that the odds still favor the penis-bearer. The passport privileges of being a man have hardly been revoked. If anything, they’ve been super-ratified for roof entry to the helicopter pad.”
The full article is Men Evolving Badly: American manhood is in crisis, judging by a surge of manifestos such as The Decline of Men, The Disposable Male, and Save the Males. Performing his own culture check, from High Noon to The Simpsons, the author crashes the pity party by James Wolcott (Vanity Fair, 4/21/08).
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