Stiffed

With the publication of Backlash, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Susan Faludi became a world-renowned authority on the gender war, and ‘backlash’ in the gender sense became a household word. Stiffed picks up where Backlash left off. It seeks to understand male behaviour in order to close the chasm between the sexes, and asks the all important question – why? Why are men so fearful and aggressive in the face of women’s independence? Why is a little liberation seen as too much? What is it that men really fear, and why? Where other theorists have looked at The Woman Question, Faludi shows us that we should really focus on The Man Question; at the end of the millennium, it is men who are in crisis. With her sharp historical sense, meticulous documentation and lively, probing reportage, and with a remarkable empathy, she argues that men as well as women are at the mercy of social forces distorting their lives. She takes us on a journey through the modern masculine landscape, with unexpected revelations along the way – from the shuttered shipyards to the mass lay-offs of the defence industries, from Hollywood action heroes to gang-torn streets, from militia men to Promise Keepers, praying husbands to male porn actors.