Review: Blue Sky Rebellion

Jack Kammer, author of two excellent previous volumes, Good Will Toward Men: Women Talk Candidly About the Balance of Power Between the Sexes and If Men Have All the Power, How Come Women Make the Rules? has written his third men’s rights book, Heroes of the Blue Sky Rebellion, and it’s a very, very good one. (Full disclosure: I provided the author with two rounds of detailed comments on earlier drafts of the book, for which I receive an acknowledgement for “essential suggestions” from the author.)

“Heroes” is both very similar to and very different from If Men Have All the Power. Very similar, in that it is another short, punchy, accessibly written, even aphoristic and at the same time gutsy primer addressing a need in men’s rights literature. Very different, in that this book (while it may be read with interest with anyone) is directed to boys and young men in the age range of thirteen to 23, and is primarily designed to initiate young males into basic principles regarding men’s rights (and in fact to propel them toward thinking about and working on transforming many of the very issues on which the National Coalition for Men works).

The book proper begins with a section titled, “You Deserve Better,” which very efficiently sums up the predicament faced by today’s boys. The section titled, “So Few Choices. So Much Time” sketches out the incomparably greater life options enjoyed by women, in an homage to Warren Farrell that incorporates Kammer’s own take on matters.

I am not sure endnotes belong in a book like this at all, requiring as they do that the reader flip between different sections of the volume, and I definitely don’t think it is appropriate for a book with this book’s intended audience to spend fully one-third of its length on the notes. In my view, they should have been trimmed, and the extra space that would thereby be gained used to flesh out some of the book’s less easily intelligible arguments.

I find the book quite scattershot, both in authorial voice and in subject.  That is, I find the tone often varies quite significantly between successive paragraphs, moving sometimes from a perfectly appropriate, down-to-earth mode to an approach more appropriate for someone like myself, an intellectual, almost-fifty father interested in men’s issues. The subject wanders in ways that will be hard for the uninitiated to follow. Topic transitions are not always as smooth as one might wish and occasionally are not present at all.  These shortcomings sometimes seem to require the reader to already have the tools the book is trying to provide.  In my view, a bit too much reliance is placed on the admittedly excellent 1999 Daniel Kindlon-Michael Thompson book Raising Cain.

Most fundamentally, I believe the Blue Sky Rebellion needs to be set up in more detail right up front, before other issues are explored or refinements and examples discussed. This is particularly true given the treacherous combination of unfamiliar terminology and concepts that will almost certainly be new to the reader.  What is the Blue Sky Rebellion? Why participate? A single page summarizes what the author means by the term and then he moves on to devote, for example, fourteen excellent pages to expected attacks on the Rebellion and proposed self-defense in response to these attacks.

I do not agree with Kammer that it is primarily men who have failed boys. The discussion of male suicide is very good but given its intellectual tone, it might fit in better in a book for adults.  Similarly, several other issues are treated excellently yet at a level incongruent with the stated audience: female attendance at law school, the discussion of fathers facing barriers as equal parents, advertising’s perpetuation of limitations on male roles, and adolescence as spring training.

Kammer deftly highlights the issue of choice as one of women’s main advantages. A boxed item explaining that while the engine may be considered “more important” than the car, life is much more pleasant for the stereo, is fantastic. Here we get what we too often miss: a potent and easily understandable metaphor, simple language, and a powerful message, all rolled into one short example. As a counterexample, the mention of three New Guinea tribes and their remarkable range of gender ideas typifies Kammer’s work in that there is lots that is fascinating and new and yet sadly it often does not quite fully cohere. Similarly, a metaphor of male role limitations as a race from New York to Los Angeles in which the male has a head start but may not want to go to LA fails to fully connect and comes across as a bit strained.

For all these concerns I have listed, “Heroes” truly is richly rewarding and page for page, simply can’t be beat as a primer on men’s issues. The paragraph analogizing present-day testosterone prejudice with past uterus prejudice is apposite. The discussions scattered throughout the book on making allies of male friends are great, as is the section on persuading boys who are “losers” to become allies. I really enjoyed the tips for reaching the heart of one’s father, mother, and teachers.

The author includes an illuminating and heart-warming story of former National Football League (NFL) player Joe Ehrmann, who habitual tells his high school team their top job is to love each other. The author also includes an excellent section addressing “What if You Are Just No Good at Sports? Remarkable is the word that comes to mind for the story of longtime activist Fred Hayward being abruptly tossed off the air by Oprah Winfrey after pointing out that men are discriminated against more than blacks are in terms of jail population.

The great range of ideas listed in the “Let the Rebellion Begin” chapter are often original. At times they are a bit much and seem unlikely to work for most young males (write poetry, start your own Internet radio station, give speeches to Lions and Rotary Clubs, tell your principal you would like to organize a Boys’ History event) but collectively are a powerful and inspiring read.

Jack Kammer’s Blue Sky Rebellion deserves our attention and support. The author provides many powerful ideas and his astute determination to enlist our young males offers the potential to transform the gender work paradigm to a much more fully inclusive model.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009 at 11:39 am and is filed under Book Review, Current Events, Feminism, Men's Rights Activism, Sex & Metropolis, Society, Vox Populi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. | 232 views | Trackback |  Print This Post |

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