Trying to educate, not alienate

Alex Coolman

Susan Faludi has trouble making everybody happy.

The 40-year-old writer, who will speak this weekend as part of the

Newport Beach Public Library’s annual lecture series, is best known for

her groundbreaking 1992 book “Backlash,” which drew attention to the

anti-feminist trend in American society and media.

But Faludi’s new work, “Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man,” is

one that has been ruffling just as many feathers.

“There are days,” the author said, speaking in slow, eloquent sentences,

“when I think I’ve managed to alienate everybody.”

“Stiffed” has won praise for its fair-minded reporting and its

compassionate approach to men’s situations, but it has also flustered

some critics and readers who are no longer sure of what to make of

Faludi’s politics.

“A lot of men don’t want to be looked at, and most particularly don’t

want to be looked at by a feminist woman,” said Faludi, who is now a

contributing editor to Newsweek.

“On the other hand, there were women whose response to the very idea of

the book was, ‘Who care about men? Who cares about their pain? Enough

about you.”’

Faludi’s approach to her subject is complex. She isn’t a rabid,

man-loathing feminist stereotype and she isn’t a “family

values”-championing reactionary.

In America, where, as Faludi says, “everybody wants ideas that can be

expressed on the back of a matchbox,” her unwillingness to be dogmatic

makes her something of an intellectual loose cannon.

And that, she says, is fine with her.

“One likes to think that as you get older, you write more complicated

books -- not less,” Faludi said.

“Stiffed” gets at the story of American men by looking at the places they

work -- at a shipyard in Long Beach, a grocery store in Watts, a shabby

office of a Van Nuys pornographer.

In each of her case studies, Faludi comes to a similar conclusion: men’s

ability to perform work that is useful and meaningful, once a cornerstone

of masculine identity, is gradually eroding. Faludi attributes this to a

change in societal values -- away from industry and toward what she calls

“ornamental culture.”

“There’s been a breakdown of the whole social promise that being a man

was about public engagement, was about loyalty, was about service,”

Faludi said.

In place of these faded ideals, American culture focuses increasingly on

“the values of being seen, marketing and sex appeal and consumerism,” she

said.

This focus encourages men to fashion themselves in the same narrow roles,

as ornaments and sex objects, that were once considered stereotypically

feminine.

“It’s an artificial femininity created by commercial interests, where

you’re valued for your image and your appearance and your youth, which is

the exact sort of ‘femininity’ that the feminist movement rose up to

confront,” Faludi said.

The writer thinks men -- whether they are unemployed steel workers hoping

for a break or “ghetto superstars” trying to cobble together some meager

version of street celebrity -- must realize that the lessons of feminism

are just as relevant to them.

“As much as men are led to believe that women are their enemy, the truth

is that their greatest ally may be feminism, because it was the women’s

movement that went up against the same forces that are proving so

stultifying and humiliating to men,” she said.

The difficulty of putting this insight into practice, Faludi believes, is

that it takes away the easy answers. If women aren’t purely to blame for

men’s problems and men aren’t purely to blame for women’s problems,

things get complicated.

But complicated isn’t a dirty word in the Faludi vocabulary.

“Part of having a mature feminism is to recognize the subtleties and

nuances and complexities of gender relations,” she said.

Faludi’s Friday talk, scheduled for 2 p.m., is sold out. About 60 tickets

are still available for her Saturday talk, scheduled for 7 p.m.

Her appearance is the first in this year’s Martin W. Witte Distinguished

Speakers Lecture Series. Other planned speakers include Tom Brokaw,

Orville Schell and Stephen Jay Gould.

The library is at 1000 Avocado Ave., Newport Beach.