Not Guilty

Library Journal

Thomas tries to promote equality and set the record straight for the now much-maligned male. Many of his comments and topics may not be politically correct, but he uses facts, figures, and logic to make his points. Some of the topics Thomas considers are battered husbands, date rape, aggression, the female abuser, the nonassertive male, inequalities in death rates and divorce laws, and male stereotypes. He questions the duplicity in considering the discussion of the positive qualities of males and masculinity sexist when the discussion of the positive qualities of females and femininity is not. He concludes that neither sex has a monopoly on aggression, brains, harmful behavior, or any other attribute. Appropriate for libraries with men's movement collections, but only after having acquired Robert Bly's Iron John ( LJ 11/15/90), Michael Gurian's The Prince and the King ( LJ 7/92), Sam Keen's Fire in the Belly ( LJ 2/15/91), and Warren Farrell's The Myth of Male Power ( LJ 7/93).-- Scott Johnson, Meridian Community Coll. Lib., Miss.

Gilbert Taylor

The "masculinist" counterrevolution carries on with this half-serious, half-satirical tract imported from Britain. Thomas hates that men, almost exclusively, get blamed for child abuse, spouse beating, sexual harassment, date rape--the sink of moral turpitude, generally. He must protest, and does, in this glib pastiche of defensive objections to popular beliefs, as reflected in articles from women's and fashion magazines and standard feminist books. His conclusion: "Unhappiness and oppression" are more "evenly distributed" than is widely believed. Thomas' mordant solace won't ensure a sprightly start to a man's day, but--as the alleged beneficiaries of a patriarchal world--men might feel less under attack. However selective Thomas will appear to orthodox feminists, men who habitually heteroduck ("ritualized expressions of multicultural sensitivity offered by a straight, white, middle-class man," "In a Word: A Dictionary of Words That Don't Exist but Ought To," 1992) might duck less often after reading this expression of their unarticulated thoughts.