Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men [Hardcover]

 

 

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Michael Kimmel's GUYLAND is a masterpiece -- of manipulation and deceit.

Ostensibly a concerned but kindly portrait of young American males, the book is actually a scathing, unforgiving indictment. Indeed, an in-depth analysis of how adroitly Kimmel has crafted his monumental insult of young American males and impugned their dignity -- while patting himself on the back for being simultaneously insightful and avuncular -- is the stuff of a doctor's thesis with potential to run for more pages than the book itself. This review constitutes but a brief glance at a few of the salient points that such a thesis would highlight.

It is through a combination of neatly interwoven tacks that Kimmel navigates the tricky process of passing off a brutal -- and very shallow -- portrait of young males as a thoughtful assessment.

The overall structure of the book, in and of itself, constitutes Kimmel's primary tack. Focusing, in sequence, upon various unseemly aspects of Guyland -- the term Kimmel has coined to demark the social and psychological world of males approximately 16 to 26 years in age -- he carefully cushions his words with polite disclaimers.

The basic gist of what Kimmel initially tell us is this: The wonderful young man you care about probably is not like what you'll be reading here. But you should know about the "disturbing undercurrent" (p. 9) of the realm in which he spends much of his time.

Then, as the book progresses, Kimmel's disclaimers become less cautious. Eventually they are mere passing mentions and finally they all but completely disappear. In this manner, slowly over dozens of pages, Kimmel stealthily escalates his unwary readers' ire as he heats up his criticism. At last -- without our consciously realizing that the concerned analysis has turned into an excoriating diatribe -- we have come to understand that our beloved young man, at heart, is actually a scoundrel.

Kimmel saves his best for last, launching into a fevered discussion of the harassment and rape of women. At this point, unless we have been paying attention to the tack and putting up psychological defenses, we find ourselves maneuvered into the passive position of uncomplaining (and perhaps by now even supportive) witness to Kimmel's most impassioned passages -- collectively, an orgiastic thrashing of his subjects' now-unconscious bodies. Indeed, our blood may boil so indignantly that it may escape our notice that Kimmel does not even mention how young men, too, get victimized by the opposite sex -- with far-reaching consequences and, unlike victimized women, with no sympathy from the media or the criminal justice system (for one thought-provoking depiction of the phenomenon, I recommend IT'S NOT ABOUT THE TRUTH: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE DUKE LACROSSE RAPE CASE AND THE LIVES IT SHATTERED, by Don Yaeger with Mike Pressler).

Embedded within the structure of this screed of intellectual terrorism lie several additional tacks for seducing readers to agree with Kimmel's woeful conclusions.

One insidious tack for imbuing his writing with an apocryphal aura of credibility -- and thereby deflecting potential criticism that he is nothing but a pompous, finger-wagging scold -- is to state, every now and then, positive things about young males. But Kimmel artfully makes these concessions about their good qualities with extreme care -- backhandedly placing his upbeat statements within the chapter, paragraph or sentence structure to ensure that they are tinged with doubt, or, offset by some assessment or other of ignominy. Either way, Kimmel essentially wants us to understand that if we wish to praise young males for any reason, then doing so ought to leave a bad taste in our mouths.

Another tack -- that imparts to Kimmel's writing a simulacrum of broad-mindedness and simultaneously helps to protect him against accusations that his views are rigid or ideological -- is to acknowledge that, yes, alternative perspectives about young men do exist. Impliedly, Kimmel has been willing to give these other views his serious consideration while arriving at his own conclusions.

Indeed, the casual reader might think, what more broad-mindedness could Kimmel possibly reveal about himself than to include some of these alternative perspectives -- as expressed by the very young males that Kimmel interviewed and about whom he draws such scornful judgments? According to Kimmel, many of them feel browbeaten and violated in ways that makes it very difficult to live in comity with society at large -- a society that seems out to get them at every turn. "[A]ngy right-wing radio personalities," according to Kimmel, constitute a key source of "permission" for young men's "aggrieved entitlement." (pp. 161-63) Therefore, we are to understand, most of them are rash, selfish and unreasonable.

However, the careful reader will note, if a young man successfully expresses his angst in a cogent way about "substantive issues" (p. 162), Kimmel pays him no heed.

One such fellow, a 22-year-old named Matt, does exactly that and is quoted at length. (p. 161) Kimmel's response is to ignore the issues completely and to carry on about "unacceptable" rhetoric instead. Kimmel apparently assumes that his smooth side-stepping of some meaty topics of discussion will go unnoticed. And, indeed, perhaps the casual reader, caught up in Kimmel's drama-by-distortion, will regard Matt's words simply as transitory, distracting static midst Kimmel's titillatingly hair-raising narrative.

But the issues that young Matt raises, along with many more, deserve very much to be pondered -- and there are some noteworthy writers doing so.

To be sure, Kimmel does not pretend to be the sole published author who writes about gender issues, and he makes approving reference to several writers, ranging from the famous (e.g., Susan Faludi and Carol Gilligan) to the obscure (Norah Vincent). Therefore, it is inconceivable that Kimmel is unfamiliar with writers whose perspectives differ markedly from his and, at their core, have sympathetic understanding for young males' feelings. But he will discuss only one such author -- Christina Hoff Sommers -- and it is for the sole purpose of trying to discredit her widely-praised book The War Against Boys: How Misguided Feminism Is Harming Our Young Men. Kimmel pooh-poohs Sommers's concerns, maintains silence about the successful programs she describes for improving boys' academic performance, and dismisses her out of hand with a jaw-droppingly ludicrous mischaracterization of her conclusion.

Here is how Kimmel does it. The old chestnut, "boys will be boys," according to Kimmel, gets invoked mindlessly by society at large to excuse young males' wrongdoing. Sommers invokes the phrase too. Therefore, Kimmel tells us through innuendo, this means she believes that bad behavior is acceptable and normal. Obviously, then, with this bit of perversity as Sommers's salient point, the woman must be a nutjob.

But Sommers makes no such barbaric claim, and she means something totally different by writing "boys will be boys": young males' unique personal energy and joie de vivre deserve to be acknowledged and honored -- so these qualities can be channeled productively.

With his below-the-belt strike at Sommers, Kimmel takes an audacious gamble with his credibility -- because some readers may actually have read THE WAR AGAINST BOYS too. Whether or not they agree with the thesis of Sommers's book, Kimmel's willfully duplicitous re-framing of Sommers's writing will be instantly recognizable -- and they would have to be nutjobs to believe that Kimmel is being forthright.

But Kimmel dares not risk even passing mention of certain other writers with perspectives different from his own -- and it is for good reason. Inadvertently prodding unfamiliar readers' curiosity about them could not only make him look dishonest and foolish but could prove catastrophic for him. Specifically, Warren Farrell's seven books present a wealth of data and statistics that would prove the majority of Kimmel's specious contentions to be embarrassingly inaccurate -- especially his repetitious carping about male "entitlement." Additionally, two books by McGill University professors Paul Nathanson and Katherine K. Young (part of an ongoing development of a series about misandry) not only express views very different from Kimmel's but embody the highest standards of probity and intellectual rigor. GUYLAND, in contrast, would seem as nothing but a bundle of sanctimonious rodomontade and flapdoodle suited, at best, as source material (especially its catchy title) for a sensationalistic miniseries on Lifetime TV.

Kimmel is far too smart to tell very many outright lies in GUYLAND. Instead, he cherry-picks facts in support of his contentions while ignoring, trivializing, or mischaracterizing facts that militate against the book's disheartening conclusions. Kimmel follows this tack with such wild abandon that, for any reader who possesses a full-spectrum education on gender issues, it is blatantly obvious. But for the less-informed reader, Kimmel's writing may seem very convincing. And, in these readers' minds, why should Kimmel be perceived as proffering anything besides clear-minded truth? After all, Kimmel is the father of a young son himself (a fact repeatedly affirmed throughout the book). Would such an author not have his own scion's best interests at heart?

But, as explained above, Kimmel does not content himself with arousing readers' concern. For Kimmel, concern is merely the launching platform from which he seeks to propel us into stratospheric realms of outrage. Alas for Kimmel, sometimes he ham-handedly contradicts... Read more ›

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