Word: authored
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Many of those who take the strongest exception to Hite's often harsh tone are men. Her report and the spate of good-women, bad-men advice books indicate that womenare adopting a "new sexism," according to California Educator Warren Farrell, author of last year's Why Men Are the Way They Are and one of the first male board members of the National Organization for Women. Charges Melvyn Kinder, a Los Angeles psychologist and author: "If there is a growing lack of communication between the sexes, it is precisely because of books like Hite...
...explanation for the extreme views and exaggerated statistics in Hite's report may rest with her methodology. The author went about gathering her data by mailing 100,000 questionnaires to a variety of women's groups in 43 states, ranging from feminist organizations to church groups to garden clubs. Her questionnaire listed 127 essay questions on subjects ranging from dating to hobbies to parents, many of them rather abstract. (Admits Hite: "You can quantify orgasms, but you can't quantify love.") After receiving the first 1,500 responses, Hite says, she made a demographic comparison between her respondents...
...explain the anger in Hite's survey? And, for that matter, why the more general pattern of anti-male literature at a time when, by many measures, women's lot has radically improved? "What has happened," offers Gloria Steinem, feminist author and a founder of Ms. magazine, "is that expectations have increased as reality has gotten better." The balance of power in relationships used to be about 60-40, she contends. "Now we're trying for 50-50. You have to point out the problems, and that's what some of these books are doing...
Others strongly disagree. "Books like Hite's encourage women to take the easy way out and just blame everything on men," charges Author Warren Farrell. He fears that the books are feeding into a "support system" in which women console one another by blaming men for their difficulties. He warns that this tactic will backfire. "This male-bashing makes women more suspicious and distrustful and demanding toward men," explains Farrell, "which causes men to withdraw, which causes women to get angrier...
Hite, for her part, sees her study as a positive force. Indeed, despite the bleakness of her data, the author is hopeful about the possibilities for change opened up by her research. "I'm providing the road map for men to see what women feel works in relationships. Society is creating a certain dynamic between men and women, and men are behaving badly because of this," she says. "I don't think men are born to behave that way." Pulling a sort of reverse Henry Higgins, she sees no fundamental reason why a man can't be more like...