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The Decline of Males: The First Look at an Unexpected New World for Men and Women |
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| Author: Lionel Tiger Published: 2000-09-02 |
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List price: $14.95 Our price: $11.66 |
Usually ships in 24 hours As of: January 07th, 2009 03:27:46 AM |
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Customer comments on this selection. Very interestingI do recoment it to anyone . It's interesting and really can show you things from other point of view or even let you know of things that you didn't know . I like it  Feminism reduced to a sexual trade union movement'The Decline of Males' is one of those rare books that, if the argument is understood, promises to radically alter your way of looking at the world. That alone should justify it being described as an important work and undoubtedly should be attracting greater and more serious attention than it so far has. Lionel Tiger, a respected professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University, applies his discipline as well as the lens of Darwinism, to the massive social and political changes that have occured in the last few decades. In particular, the transformation in the overt political and economic power enjoyed by women, a radical and quite remarkably rapid change in the fumdamental way that men and women had lived unshaken for thousands of years in every corner of the globe and yet which is now beginning to crumble even in such macho refuges of patriarchy as Latin America. Only the Islamic world seems to have the spirit or the will to resist. Tiger puts most or all of this change down to one event; the innovation and widespread use of the contraceptive pill in the 1960's. For the first time in human history, men have been excluded from the reproductive process, leading to a loss of faith in the paternity of their mate's offspring, a consequent reluctance to 'commit' and therefore a need for women to enter the labour market and political sphere in order to ensure that adequate care for their children is obtained. Thus Tiger has reduced feminism, that great bedrock of our contemporary assumption to have made social and liberal 'progress', to a sexual trade union movement fighting not for high minded notions of equality or fairness but for the primitive sexual and reproductive interests of women. This is something that I, for one, have believed to be obvious for a long time, yet it is not something I had ever seen explicitly claimed in print before. Tiger's language is not quite as brutal as mine, but not only does he see feminists and women simply reacting semi-consciously to a technological innovation the consequences of which could not have been foreseen, he sees feminism as something that has almost been forced upon women. The reviewer below writes that the changes in society can be explained by such things as looser morals, decline of religion etc. To be fair, if the book can be faulted, it is that perhaps Tiger does not articulate his argument quite sharply enough. Each step can appear lost amongst all the references and studies and it is not always clear to discern why the loss of male faith in paternity is so obvious or inevitable. It seems to me that the pill has led to women becoming more promiscuous and yet women have found that instead of sexually liberating themselves, it has liberated men from the obligation or desire to commit to any unplanned pregnancy. This has led to the rapid need for women to enjoy political and economic 'equality' with men. Granting that the 'loss of faith in paternity' part of Tiger's argument is not presented as clearly as it could be, I don't think it degrades the fact that the broad sweep of what he is claiming is not only plausible but of fundamental importance. He has identified the fact that the control of the means of sexual reproducation has shifted from men to women and persuasively claimed that this is a better model for explaining social change than even the Marxist notion of ownership of the means of economic production. Whether or not this change in sexual reproduction is down wholly to the pill, indeed even to be defined in terms of the pill, or rather simply the fact that the sexual mores of the human race are now decided by feminists in actual government or in the lobby groups that they dominate, Tiger's thesis remains a whole new way of looking at contemporary politics and social change, politically incorrect and uncomfortable though it may be. The book is now nearly a decade old and yet it seems astonishing that there has been no follow up, either from other academics following where Tiger has tread, or by the author himself. I had a thousand questions in my head after finishing it, questions of the type that surely it would be an intellectual crime not to pursue. For example; does the book's thesis explain certain puzzling features of feminism, such as why western feminists are so silent about Islam and the 'subjegation' of their sisters in the Islamic world? Beliving that modern feminism is simply a sexual trade movement borne of an unforeseen necessity, in my opinion, does explain the massively lopsided importance feminists place on such things as banning prostitution and pornography whilst doing absolutely nothing about the daily treatement of women in the Islamic world, for example stoning to death of women for adultory or being whipped for showing an uncovered face. Perhaps women are indeed largely content under Islam because they can be sure that their reproductive needs will be supported, and that is all most women really want. 'The Decline of Males' could be the birth of a much needed men's movement. It surely should at least transform gender studies from it's present role of self-pitying litany of complaints against men into something that tries to honestly apply scientific discipline to the analysis of society. Lionel Tiger's book represents an exemplary model account of social change rooted in the competing sexual interests of male and female that are the undeniable mechanisms that lie behind every other primate society. Who Knows How Things Will Unfold?I have my students read chapters from this book in my class in Biopolitics. Undergraduate men like it--a Men's Bible so to speak. A lot of passions are aroused in classroom conversations. The "pill" may be the major technological innovation behind expanding female reproductive autonomy, but there's a lot of other stuff too, a lot of it mentioned in the book. What percentage of otherwise fertile women use the pill? Other methods of contraception? My guess is that it is women's increasing education and better health, parcel of modernization, that is driving increased contraception, and reducing the birth rate, as women facultatively shift from r-strategists to K-strategists. So the fertility rate declines generally, especially among women with more education who tend to marry at a later age. Tiger wrote before the phenomenon of sexually antagonistic coevolution became widely known, but what he writes about seems to amount to the cultural expression of this phenomenon. Look to the promiscuous fruit flies. There are advantages and disadvantages to both sexes from promiscuity. I suppose for the female fruit fly, she gets sexy sons. But there are costs, including the dangers she suffers from intense male-male competition for mates and problems associated with multiple insemination. Human equivalents? Physical and mental abuse due to male sexual jealousy; risk of STDs. For males, there are also pluses and minuses to short term mating, detailed by Buss (1999). Plural marriages and monogamy also have their advantages and disadvantages for both sexes. Humans are moderately polygynous. That's clear enough from the degree of sexual dimorphism. Promiscuity has been around, but it's not the main thing, as Murdock pointed out long ago. In may view, Tiger has hit the nail on the head in terms of identifying increases in female reproductive autonomy as being of enormous social significance. Culture plainly changes more rapidly than human biology, so as he notes we can anticipate a bad fit between the former and the latter. How will it all play out? Don't know! Some reviewers have commented that men seem befuddled by it all. As Henry Ford once remarked, however, Don't complain, don't explain. Men may continue to believe, perhaps correctly, that women's habits don't change that quickly either, and that in the end they will prefer "tough" guys who will give them "sexy" sons. It would be nice if they had a lot of $$$$ too! If women with a lot of education are disappointed, it may be that they cannot have it all--there just aren't that many men who are both r (real handsome, masculine, and sexy) and K (smart with a ton of $$$$). There it is! Footnote. Spending some time and observing what goes on in lower class neighborhoods in City of Detroit (daughter lives in one, albeit one of the better ones), the average suburbanite would be startled by it all. Young men urinating in the street. Drug dealers pursuing delinquent accounts at 65+ miles per hour down residential streets. Foreclosed houses with stuff piled on the curb. Teens pushing stolen cars down the street to places where they can safely strip them. High decibel rap music. Random gunfire. Pit bulls pulling on their leashes. Bars on windows and doors. Most adult, married, employed, law abiding men would not put up with it, but unfortunately there are just not a lot of them in this part of the City. And like Iraq, a few thugs have taken charge, and the instinct of self-preservation has taken hold. Is something wrong here? Single parenthood isn't all that great, whatever it's causes. Enough. Poverty And Age Reduce Women's OptionsLionel Tiger's c1999 text "The Decline Of Males" is a socioeconomic study of late 20th Century gender roles. The slightly pedantic study is detailed, well referenced and addresses global trends while concentrating on Western society. Professor Tiger argues that men's aptitudes (hunter/maintainer/heavy lifter) are devalued in post-industrial society. This is true in affluent petroleum-energized society, but men's aptitudes regain value as economic conditions worsen and petroleum prices rise. And senior women (usually) lose physicial stamina earlier than senior men (e.g., osteoporosis). Senior women often need heavy lifters. Women choosing to live without a long-term male partner might require paid assistance during their senior years, a potentially costly lifestyle decision. And children raised without a male parent's guidance must learn some of life's lessons themselves.  whining about loss of privilegethis is whining of a group that in the recent past were masters of all they surveyed, and now they have been given a reality check and been deposed from the position of lord and master of the house. now men aren't sure what their "role" is--i guess they can't think of any other way to be men than to financially lord it over their wives and children. the author thinks teenage women should have children and claims that is when they are at the height of their reproductive years. i guess he never saw the study that showed that women are not fully biologically developed, even at 17 and 18, and that having a child while still a teenager is dangerous both to the mother and the baby with an increased risk of miscarriage and infant mortality. my mother grew two inches when she was 18 and pregnant with my older sister--a clear case of two babies trying to grow at the same time. but i don't think mr. tiger thinks in terms of safety for anything but his ego--and keeping women barefoot and pregnant, and unable to go to college and have a career, and dependent on a man for support, keeps women from threatening the male ego. and if the man actually stays and supports his young wife and children, fine and great, but i think it is men that are conflicted about the role of provider and breadwinner. they want to be the big cheese but when the going gets tough they take off and lolita and the baby get to depend on the state for support. i just think that men should walk their masculine talk or shut up and stop whining like sissies. at the end of the book we get a parting jab at feminists-they are "immature" and "paraniod". however nobody sounds more immature and paranoid than these lost confused man-children. |
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