This book is a quite devastating criticism of academic feminism, written by well documented and articulate insiders who seem familiar with the philosophy, theory and practice of academic feminism. The criticism hits on all these levels. If we are to take the book at face value, academic feminism is an intellectual disaster comparable maybe with Stalinism, Scientology or the Inquisition: its method is anti-intellectual, critical thinking is discouraged, dissenters are ostracized. No redeeming qualities are found to mitigate its defects. The whole enterprise is deemed a failure and an embarrassment to its noble origins. Ultimately, feminism as taught and practiced today is presented as a danger to civilized society.

The authors are convincing and the various points are illustrated with interesting anecdotes. Particularly funny was the story of a women's studies lesbian professor announcing the heterosexual students that, if the course works as supposed, all students will be lesbians by the end of the term. One student, a married women with children, was persecuted by the professor by being given substantial extra assignments because she was deemed to be 'stubborn' regarding her (hetero)sexuality.

My qualm is a methodological one. The authors start by saying that they will apply "feminist methodology" in their study. Only later in the book it is explained that feminist methodology prefers anecdotes and testimonials ('connected thinking', which is good) to the "patriarchal" statistics ('compartimentalized thinking' which is bad). But the context of their description of this methodolgy is, again, one of scathing, devastating criticism. Feminist methodology is exposed as pseudo-intellectual. So I can't help but wonder why the authors use the very same methodolgy which their book dismisses as unsound. The effect is that, with a lack of statistical figures, it is impossible to say how pervasive are the problems they mention. Some problems, the ideological ones, are universal by definition. But they are not the most striking. The more striking are the ones regarding the practice of feminism, especially the instances where dissent is supressed and dissenters are punished. But the feminist methodology used by the authors gives us no clue how wide-spread this very important problem is.

I wish to god this book had been available when I was an undergrad at a university that was a nightmare of PC. Deserves to be kept in print until the current generation of posturing wackos have faded away.

The 1960s seemed like a good decade. The Vietnam war gave at least those of us of "the affluent society" something to fight against; many people, black and white, fought for the successes of the civil rights movement; "women's lib," which had its conspicuous beginnings in earlier centuries, gained strength with women's education and consciousness of inequities.

But something went wrong. The later 20th century reinterpretation of the benefits of the 60s contradicted the gains. Persons once sought equality. Now we find identity politics in which the allegedly downtrodden--often the more privileged segments of oppressed (sometimes really oppressed and sometimes self-designated as such) classes--depend on their status as victims to claim a new identity distinct--segregated--from AND morally superior to the rest of us. This book is an analysis of one sample of that segregation.

As earlier reviews have noted, the authors are not right-wing, "religious right," or other activists from whom one would expect a refutation of anything feminist. On the contrary, they are feminists themselves, and scholars. (Dr. Koertge has edited at least two other books in my libary on dimensions of critical thinking, of which she is an advocate. Such thinking is a rarity among the feminists the authors interviewed to write the book). They interviewed women, many of whom had enough faith in their movement to start women's studies programs. Yet some even of those pioneers left that movement quite disillusioned. After all the intellectual effort that went into creating such programs, various lesbian organizations claimed that a woman could not be feminist "enough" unless also lesbian, i.e., rejecting all that is ostensibly male; women not inclined to "true" or particularly zealous feminism were rejected by their women's studies classmates and faculty as, in effect, incomplete women; opinions differing from those of the zealots were seen as virtually seditious. So the "left" became the mirror image of the oppressive "right" it claimed to oppose on the historical day before.

Each chapter covers something else about this "movement" that, when not comical, is a sample of near fascism. From language perversions and interpretations used by the zealots to ensure their status as oppressed, to "social construction" amounting to no more than revisionist pseudo-science. I appreciate too the authors' perception that much of the feminist (and other!) rhetoric of the academy is more trendy than substantial. (No, I'm not making an anti-academic commentary. Rather, I'm corroborating that what I often hear from the "academic left" whose ideology one must buy to make heads or tails out of their balderdash!) And all too many of the women's studies faculty the authors talked with reject conventional scholarly practice. The authors plead for a return to that practice. (Portions of the book reminded me of a neighbor of mine, a Ph.D. who works for the government. She's a bright woman who "left academia" because those on the "academic left," despite their pathetically weak or nonexistene arguments, would even allow her to disagree with them!)

A chapter points out too that, while many of us would like to believe that the sort of "feminists" to whom the authors refer are a tiny minority of extremists, they are actually the rule rather than the exception. (And, as I work with many a "left" organization, feminist and in other dimensions "political," I corroborate that too; anti-racists, for example--nearly always white--who define racism to include anything they choose to disagree with, thereby excluding nearly everyone from their social and moral status).

The book is out of print at this point. One of the authors e-mailed me that they are working on a second edition. Hoping I could help them with a little critical advice, I suggested they consider eliminating some acronyms they created, e.g., "IDPOL" for "identity politics" and, coincidentally, "ideological policing," "TOTALREJ," and "WORDMAGIC." I felt, when I was about half way through the book, that these little word plays may minimize the impact of what the authors were saying. After completing the book I don't feel as strongly that way. If it's even possible that those "words" can evoke discussion of the issues, then the book has served a great political purpose: pursuit of the truth.

Needless to say, I recommend the book. My hope is that it's not just read by "the choir," but develops a following of its own. While some feminists reading this review will label me anti-feminist, I stress that I am far from that. I do, however, challenge any group that segregates itself based on false reasoning or pretentious morality, especially a group that claims it's fighting segregation and inequality.

What do I mean? Read the book, the original, or the revised edition. Then we can talk.

I found out about this novel through my professor, Daphne Patai, who wrote the afterword and also contributed to getting this work published. In this book, Burdekin creates a world in which men are inferior to women and shows us how truly important equality is. It is rather ironic that the publisher of this novel is the Feminist Press because the book isn't at all promoting women as the superior gender. Instead, the author gives us characters that sacrifice their lives to restore the balance of power between the sexes. This book is well-written, however it does tend to go into long lectures at some points. The middle of the novel (chapters 3 and 4) is rather tedious and really could have been shortened or revised. But overall, this book is an interesting and often thought-provoking and even humorous. Altogether, a good read.

Patai and Koertage have studied the hate training program called "Women's Studies" from a sociological perspective. They go into detail on how a badly flawed political training program masquerading as "studies" is now being promoted and taught at virtually every college. Instead of education, young women get dogma. Instead of intellectual challenges, young feminists are taught to accept the party line without question. The authors include reviews of government agency promotion of the dis-education now accepted on college campuses. Where "knowing" replaces scholarship, where victimology replaces competency, where hate replaces wisdom, that is today's "Women's Studies" program. Title IX is mentioned in passing, but the question of an equal education required by law is not asked. With over 700 colleges in the US now funding misandrist propaganda classes called "Women's Studies" why aren't any of them required to also teach equivalent classes for men under Title IX? Even as bad as Women's Studies comes off in this book there is other, and perhaps equally valid and more damning criticism left out.

The book needs to be widely read by every college administrator and by every legislator who has to vote on college budgets. The authors mince a few words, probably to keep from being stoned, but the message is clearly stated. Prejudicial agenda conformity and hate on campus is not education. Buy the book. Give one to your college age student. Donate another one to your favorite library and college.

The past decade has seen a proliferation of books debunking feminist ideology. Most of these smart denunciations have been written by articulate and intelligent ladies like Christina Hoff Sommers, Katie Roiphe, Danielle Crittenden, and Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, but Daphne Patai seems to have zeroed in on a more specialized topic. Her contribution is devoted to exposing fanatical feminism's unhealthy war on heterosexual behavior. Some would dismiss the philippics of a few feminist extremists, but Ms. Patai is wisely consistent advising, "cultivating hatred for another human group ought to be no more acceptable when it issues from the mouths of women than when it comes from men, no more tolerable from feminists than from the Ku Klux Klan."

Heterosexuality generally comes under fire as a result of unchained misandry and a ridiculous sense that all "offensive" behaviors are equal. This equivocation leads to disturbed precepts. Many of the heterophobes she quotes regularly put the use of a sexist word like "manhole" on a par with rape. The juxtaposition of these vastly disparate transgressions has lead to many bizarre sexual harassment laws. Despite the good intentions behind these rubrics, the book presents many cases where they have done far more harm than good. Ms. Patai presents what she terms the Sexual Harassment Industry (SHI) as a big business that has gained tremendous power over a short period of time. From the universities who indoctrinate students to scholars who establish restrictive speech allowances, and the lawyers who prosecute the most nonsensical case, the SHI is shown to be a growth industry on the fast track.

Professor Patai includes some anecdotes which would sound like jocose fantasies were they not such absurdly sad realities. She tells of one college lecturer who repeatedly discussed her "partner"-never letting on that it is her husband and the father of her children. She also describes a self-loathing man who believing heterosexuality was invidiously patriarchal, converted to homosexuality, but still felt guilty and became celibate. Among the most wearying of feminist rants is the often expressed claim that all women see heterosexuality as their oppressor or else they are just fooling themselves. From evidence Ms. Patai puts forth, "fooling oneself" seems to be a cornerstone of much of modern feminist reasoning.

Although she is generous in quoting avatars of heterophobia like Andrea Dworkin and Catherine MacKinnon, readers possessing at least a passing familiarity with these radicals will most likely derive enhanced value from this thoughtful book.

Heterophobia - A Review of D. Patai's New Book.

Yowzah... I have just finished reading "Heterophobia; Sexual Harassment and the Future of Feminism" by Daphne Patai, and the rush from having a couple of hundred pages of Honest & Forthright Examination come barreling through the official B.S. and hit you right between the eyes... Is certainly worth a couple of dozen of the ordinary Gender Feminist Awareness "Clicks", so painfully praised in the dogma of the self righteously ms.andristic.

And my oh my what a lot of sacred cows and radical feminist icons get gored between the opening preface and these closing words, the shattered pretenses and threadbare capes of Ms.andrists and Mauists (aka mau mau artists) alike - are no longer able to conceal the ugly truth about an agenda hateful towards Men, Male and Female Heterosexuality, and those Female Dupes who submit to the brutal oppression of penis wielding patriarchs (aka Men). Along the way she also explores the "guilt" felt by heterosexual women for their consorting with (ugh) Men and still claiming "feminist" credentials, and how the warped view of separatist lesbians has been enforced as the norm for those who are "genuine & pure" feminists.

While the range and scope of insight provided by Patai is astonishing in it's boldness and (sometimes) brutal honesty, this book is worth reading if alone for the window (or is that a closet door) it opens upon those militant lesbian separatists who have been so successful in having their hateful dogma propagated throughout our society and it's laws. She provides clear and unambiguous information about not only their activities in thought policing what passes for Academia, but about the outright "exterminationist" agenda which is the cutting edge of their castration equals empowerment ideology.

We get introduced to all the great haters in the vanguard of "Feminism" (she does not employ Christina Hoff Sommers terminology of Gender vs. Equity feminism, nor mention her work), among them Mac Kinnon, Dworkin, Daly, Solanas (of SCUM renown), Gearhart and more. She holds up for inspection their utopian fantasies of worlds without men or (attached) penises, or those where men have been reduced by attrition (voluntary or otherwise) to a docile 10% of the population, and all reproduction and behavior is controlled by "Non-Male-Identified Women" (read rabidly radical lesbians) who are the only ones who can be trusted to properly order society.

I could go on in this vein for a while, but it would be superfluous... Get yourself a copy of Heterophobia by Daphne Patai, she is worth reading by anyone with any pretense of an open mind. She has also raised the bar for those half witted hatemongers who make up so much of the "SHI", and now have some serious spin doctoring to do while trying to worm out of the light shone on them by Patai's debunking.

Patai has thrown down a gauntlet (such a butch term, isn't it?) to the Sexual Harassment Industry and the misandrists, hatemongers, and exterminators at it's heart - It is doubtful that any among them can or will take it up, the risk is too great to the tax sponsored troughs they wallow at.

And yet I would surely love to see one of them try it out in the open; instead of conspiring in secret to silence all dissent, and hanging from the nearest lamp post any one foolish enough to bring this devastating book to class, let alone open it and begin reading.

In order to get a sense of where the sexual harassment industry started, and where it is going to end up, you have to read Simone de Beauvoir's book The Long March, a very positive appraisal of Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution. Simone de Beauvoir, whose texts are canonical within women's studies, was an ardent Maoist, and continued passing out Maoist pamphlets in the 1970s in Paris.

Probably the second biggest feminist thinker in the American pantheon is the French theorist Julia Kristeva. She was also a huge fun of Mao into the late 1970s.

Reading those two books will give you the full picture of what is happening in American academia in women's studies today.

What happened in Tianamen Square in the late 1980s to students who opposed Mao's Cultural Revolution is what happens to anybody who stands up to women's studies in academia. They get steamrolled. At this point it is a movement that is totally out of control. Nobody on earth can stop it.

Patai had the guts to document this movement while it is at full throttle. It is amazing that she is still alive.

Thank God this book exists.

There was an accident here. The review you see at the top of the review column is for a completely different book. There are no photographs in this book. It is a novel with a completely different author and title than the first review sayes it is.

This book is a good example of a kind of writing which became mildly popular during the second half of the 19th century in which a character's discovery that he is part black is a crucial plot element. Other examples of this can be found in Pud'nhead Wilson by Mark Twain and Desiree's Baby by Kate Chopin. So, it is a good book for anyone who is interested in race relations. The story takes place in Sao Luis (Brazil's second largest slave trading port) during the 1870s, when slavery still existed. Sao Luis was a very conservative, provencial city in which the Catholic church was openly against abolition, and the main villian in the book is a catholic priest. Apparently Azevedo, who was just 23 when he wrote the book, angered the local upper class so much with this book that he had to move out of town. Although Mulatto is considered to be the first Brazilian novel in the Naturalist or Realist tradition, there are many elements of romanticism in the plot which tends to be melodramatic and sloppy at times. Still, it serves as a fascinating historical document and at times Azevedo's prose is fantastic, forshadowing the greatness that was to come later with his masterpiece, The Slum.