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Roy F. Baumeister

Is There Anything Good About Men?: How Cultures Flourish by Exploiting Men 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by Roy F. Baumeister (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

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Have men really been engaged in a centuries-old conspiracy to exploit and oppress women? Have the essential differences between men and women really been erased? Have men now become unnecessary? Are they good for anything at all?

In Is There Anything Good About Men?, Roy Baumeister offers provocative answers to these and many other questions about the current state of manhood in America. Baumeister argues that relations between men and women are now and have always been more cooperative than antagonistic, that men and women are different in basic ways, and that successful cultures capitalize on these differences to outperform rival cultures. Amongst our ancestors---as with many other species--only the alpha males were able to reproduce, leading them to take more risks and to exhibit more aggressive and protective behaviors than women, whose evolutionary strategies required a different set of behaviors. Whereas women favor and excel at one-to-one intimate relationships, men compete with one another and build larger organizations and social networks from which culture grows. But cultures in turn exploit men by insisting that their role is to achieve and produce, to provide for others, and if necessary to sacrifice themselves. Baumeister shows that while men have greatly benefited from the culture they have created, they have also suffered because of it. Men may dominate the upper echelons of business and politics, but far more men than women die in work-related accidents, are incarcerated, or are killed in battle--facts nearly always left out of current gender debates.

Engagingly written, brilliantly argued, and based on evidence from a wide range of disciplines, Is There Anything Good About Men? offers a new and far more balanced view of gender relations.

ISBN-13

978-0195374100
Edition

1st
Sticky notes

On Kindle Scribe
Publisher

Oxford University Press
Publication date

12 Aug. 2010
Language

English
File size

1150 KB
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Product description

Review

[Baumeister] does make the fascinating point that men operate at the extremes, socially and biologically. --Bitch

'Male readers may find some solace in Roy F. Baumeister's Is There Anything Good About Men? Mr. Baumeister is less concerned about the wimpification of modern man than about the degree to which men have been historically exploited. The very cultures that men have built, he says, have considered
males more expendable than women... But men, Mr. Baumeister says, are often taken for granted and denigrated as the bane of female existence, with some gender activist insisting that women would be better off without them. In a feisty rejoinder, Mr. Baumeister says that 'if women really would have
been happier without men, they would have set up shop on their own long ago.
--Dave Shiflett, Wall Street Journal

Read this if you're open to a thought-provoking take on so-called battle of the sexes. Packed with counterintuitive but convincing points, the book will reshape how you think about sexism, feminism, and gender differences. Andrea Bartz, Psychology Todayl

There are some interesting arguments concerning marriage, procreation, and the creation of culture that students and professionals in the field of evolutionary psychology probably
would be interested in discussing further. -- Elin Weiss, Sex Roles

--This text refers to the hardcover edition.

About the Author

Roy F. Baumeister is the Eppes Eminent Professor of Psychology and head of the social psychology graduate program at Florida State University. The Institute for Scientific Information lists him among the handful of most cited (most influential) psychologists in the world. He is the co-editor, with John Baer and James Kaufman, of Are We Free? Psychology and Free Will and The Cultural Animal: Human Nature, Meaning, and Social Life. --This text refers to the hardcover edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003WT26I0
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; 1st edition (12 Aug. 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 1150 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 320 pages

Best Sellers Rank: 726,776 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 507 in Clinical Psychology (Kindle Store)
- 535 in Gender Studies (Kindle Store)
- 699 in Social Psychology & Interactions

Customer reviews:
4.4 124 ratings

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Laimtoh

A well researched and objective book on a very sensitive subject

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 26 July 2020

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Very thoroughly researched and referenced, it gives a useful insight into the history of how men are treated and judged, and gives clear reasons why such things as pay differences (when you look at the general average, not the mean average) exist and that in fact there are more men at the lowest end of the pay distribution, too.

I wanted to find out more about the statistic showing that "we have twice as many female ancestors as male ancestors." It's a complicated subject to understand, but is well explained by the author and his point is that men are at a huge disadvantage in this really important area, and don't have it all so good.

I thought it was fairly written, and not in any way written to annoy or denegrate women. It's been written as any academic should be aiming for - to put some balance into the argument, which has been sorely lacking in these times.

I would say it's a must-read for any men who have pondered the question put to us in the title. I would imagine that since about the late 'sixties, this would include a large percentage of them.

One person found this helpful

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boomer

A whispered warning of a coming calamity....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 February 2021

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The understated, reasonable tone of this work is almost at odds with a menacing message. Men, universally taken for granted and disrespected, are awakening, rejecting their roles as scapegoats and whipping boys in the societies of their own creation. The culture once served to ensure that only the top males were allowed reproductive access. It has evolved further, through monogamy, exhorting the male to strive, and to fight, in defence of his wife, his children....his culture. But, what if that present culture makes no secret of transferring his hard earned wealth to women, children, and identitarian victims, a hotchpotch and mishmash of subcultures which he barely recognises? Where is the stimulus to strive to be the best? Where is the incentive to fight? Or even defend..? We cannot continue to treat men in this way, then expect them to behave in the time honoured manner of self sacrifice. Feminism should look long and hard at its gains. These may prove to be pyrrhic victories.

2 people found this helpful

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Frugal Dougal

This book is brilliant. I could be picky about the occasional typo ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 12 April 2016

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This book is brilliant. I could be picky about the occasional typo here and there, but I was reading the kindle version, not sure if thy exist in print.

As a fifty something guy I found the argument put forward by the author excellent, though requiring some thinking on my part to plug gaps. For example, if marriage is a means by which society/culture transfers resources from men to women, how does the dowry system, prevalent in many cultures, tally with that? My guess is that it's a long term investment to produce grandchildren, but that's not explicit from the text.

However, this is a brilliant book and I would recommend it to any young man just embarking on life's rich journey, and would actually buy a copy for any youngsters I knew if they weren't already married with kids. If I knew when I was in my teens what I have had explained to me in this book, things that I vaguely, instinctively, knew to be the case, I just didn't have the research, intellect and insight of The author, my life might have turned out differently. But, I am where I am and not too dissatisfied with life, plus the book wasn't published until I was in my late forties.

Buy this book!

One person found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Essential

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 18 February 2021

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Baumeister provides the behavioural psychological data which elucidates what it means to be male. He then shows how these traits play out in society at large.

This books answers questions like:
Why do men choose more dangerous jobs?
Why do men choose higher paying careers?
Why are men disproportionately the victims of violent crime and domestic abuse?
What is the net benefit to society provided by men?

One person found this helpful

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Chris X

There's plenty good about men

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 15 September 2020

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Should be mandatory reading, brilliant stuff.

2 people found this helpful

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FG

Oh. My.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 31 January 2014

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This book is good. Get it. Read it. Enjoy it.
If you are careful enough - you might even talk about it, as it WILL make you enemies at every ocasion with some post-modern feminists around :))))))

Good reasoning, balanced approach, sufficient evidencial material and some good writing on top of that.

Highly recommended.

4 people found this helpful

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JaqT

A must read for anybody interested in how society works and what makes both men and women tick and takes the competitive notion

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 2 June 2015

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A really worthwhile read and extremely interesting and enlightening. A must read for anybody interested in how society works and what makes both men and women tick and takes the competitive notion of one sex being better than the other right out of the equation.

2 people found this helpful

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CVE

Poorly referenced and highly biased personal opinions

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 October 2016

Verified Purchase

We read this book for our non-fiction book group. Sadly it doesn't really fall in that category. Poorly written and rambling, he repeats himself endlessly and provides no real evidence for his opinions. If you have read anything in this area of gender there are glaring omissions from the cherry picked studies he does include. Tends to present an idea followed by a supporting personal experience, if you only have two data points then there will always be correlation. Very disappointing.

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