The Wimp Factor : Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity

Rating:
Summary: The Anti-Male Gimp Factor.
Review: I happened to come across a book by Stephan J. Ducat called The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity. I read the back cover, along with the chapter titles, and felt utter revulsion. Yet, in the spirit of knowing one's enemies, I begrudgingly further enriched the wealthy psychoanalyst author by purchasing it for the purposes of review and refutation. I lament to report that the quality of this work is quite poor. To adapt a quote of Gertrude Stein's, "there's no there there."

The Wimp Factor offers nothing new and is a rank bouillabaisse of cliché and dogma. It's stock is boiled from political correctness and within it swirl chunks of radical feminism, socialism, and anti-white racism. It cannot be recommended as Ducat's positions are so stereotyped and unoriginal that they are entirely devoid of educational value. On the very first page of his Preface, the narrator lets his readers know that his voice will be a polemical one as he describes a politician's need to be seen hunting as a way of letting the "male electorate" know that "he still likes to kill things."

Not only is the author a peddler of hackneyed emotion, he is also a very poor psychologist. No insight on men is offered that could not be cut and pasted from the clipboards of Katha Pollitt or Barbara Enhrenreich. Ducat is a jargon-enriched Michael Moore who is devoid of the filmmaker's creativity. The analysis here is strictly Manichean. Ducat views women, gays, people of color, and Democrats as being good while all white heterosexual males, and Republicans in general, are evil. It's really quite tiresome. The only new thing presented is a vast expanse of psychological gobbledygook that is smeared upon everyone with a differing opinion. The extensive morass of pseudo-intellectual constructs are land mines on the page and make this thin book seem the length of War and Peace.

In my opinion, this book should have been titled, "My Personal War on Men and Masculinity", as I have yet to encounter any work, outside of radical feminism, where men are held with such abominable contempt. Ducat is an individual who seems to hate everything about his own gender. We find that men, and our politician's need to appeal to them, is the causation behind most of America's problems. The reader is often treated to strangely Dworkinesque rhetoric like "Politics for these authoritarian priests of patriarchy" and "while male privilege cannot be explained as simply an attempt to induce envy in women, it can often serve that function." His view of women is as inaccurate as it is cliched: "The new link between women's goodness and the issues of charity, education, and social reform led to an unprecedented gendering of political issues, and, correspondingly, to florid expressions of femiphobia." Women's goodness? Are all women inherently good? Of course not. It seems that Ducat has never mixed with the general population. Some women are good and others are not. That's always the case when one examines the personalities of a sample size that, in this world, exceeds three billion souls. Assertions to the contrary illustrate how little leftists know about human behavior.

This author refers to our culture as one "that disparages the feminine." Does it? In my mind, far more evidence suggests that we celebrate the feminine. Television is awash with talk shows dedicated to the processing of emotional issues that were once treated by stoicism alone, and independent cable channels are available which are dedicated specifically to the proclivities of a female audience. Furthermore, it is common in daily conversation to hear phrases such as "a man expressing their feminine side" even though nothing I've ever read or seen suggests that such gender rotating halves exist. What about the pink ribbon? A crusade has been initiated to end breast cancer but no such grand social movement started up to end prostate cancer-a disease which claims far more lives. By this point in our new millennium, half of society actually believes inanities like "a women would never lie about rape." Yet would they believe that there is anything under the sun a man would not lie about? Has Ducat not heard of affirmative action or the horrors of the Sexual Harassment Industry? The only way that this author could realistically regard this nation as being biased in favor of men is if he had spent the last 365 days in a Bronx madrassah.

The Wimp Factor provides political correctness with a new ism and phobia for its ever-increasing lexicon through its coining of the word, "femiphobia." This is something that Ducat diagnoses in all men who don't want to be women, act like them, and resent being called a sissy. Contrarily, if a woman is perfectly happy being a woman and has no interest in being a man or compared to a man then she is [you guessed it] absolutely normal. I suppose that if one already buys spurious concepts like "homophobia" then such additional notions like femiphobia are easily accepted.


Rating:
Summary: Setting a myth straight
Review: RE: "From George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" while adorned in a flight suit..." from Scott A Lines review...

FAA regulations require that a flight suit be worn when piloting a military aircraft. Secondly, Mr. Lines and Mr. Ducat might make note that George W Bush is a former military aviator / pilot with six years experience and an honorable discharge. As such, Mr. Bush has earned the right to wear a flight suit - and most particularly when compelled by federal law to do so.

The muddled "thinking" of Lines's review on this point exemplifies the kind of deliberate political distortion and lack of objectivity that the author, Ducat, has used to base the entire convoluted premis of this book.

If you are a person already inclined toward the consumtion of the book's bias, and are merely seeking reassurance to further entrench your views, than this is the book for you.

If you are a person who places any kind of value on objectivity, historical truth, and accuracy in non fiction, save your money. There are plenty of other books that better explore the inner workings and intricacies of modern politics, and they're better written and researched to boot. In short, I really don't think anyone would be happy with the purchase of this book.

Rating:
Summary: The evening news will never look the same...
Review: The recent election left me with an uncomfortable feeling. Many people that I know supported Kerry but didn't vote for him. Most cited reasons such as "He is kind of wimpy" or "I don't think he is strong enough to lead us right now." When I stumbled across Ducat's book, I found a spring board for exploring people's uneasiness with "less than manly" politicians".
Some of Ducat's theories aren't supported with enough evidence, but overall it is an interesting and slightly alternative view of politics and gender. Definately worth a read.

Rating:
Summary: Tiresome
Review: The Wimp Factor offers nothing new and is a rank bouillabaisse of cliché and dogma. It's stock is boiled from political correctness and within it swirl chunks of radical feminism, socialism, and anti-white racism. It cannot be recommended as Ducat's positions are so stereotyped and unoriginal that they are entirely devoid of educational value. On the very first page of his Preface, the narrator lets his readers know that his voice will be a polemical one as he describes a politician's need to be seen hunting as a way of letting the "male electorate" know that "he still likes to kill things."

Not only is the author a peddler of hackneyed emotion, he is also a very poor psychologist. No insight on men is offered that could not be cut and pasted from the clipboards of Katha Pollitt or Barbara Enhrenreich. Ducat is a jargon-enriched Michael Moore who is devoid of the filmmaker's creativity. The analysis here is strictly Manichean. Ducat views women, gays, people of color, and Democrats as being good while all white heterosexual males, and Republicans in general, are evil. It's really quite tiresome. The only new thing presented is a vast expanse of psychological gobbledygook that is smeared upon everyone with a differing opinion. The extensive morass of pseudo-intellectual constructs are land mines on the page and make this thin book seem the length of War and Peace.

The reader will not be surprised to discover that Ducat is an instructor at a leftist escarpment known as New College of California; where the motto is "Education for a just, sacred and sustainable world." There one can get a B.A. in a concentration area like "EcoDwelling, Activism and Social Change or Holistic Nutrition." At such a place, The Wimp Factor, should quickly put Ducat on the fast track to department chair.


Rating:
Summary: pschobabble aplenty
Review: This book is an amazing tour de force of the political and psychological landscape in America today. From George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" while adorned in a flight suit to John Kerry tramping through the Michigan woods in a camoflague jacket totting a shotgun, the "politics of anxious masculinity," as Stephen Ducat calls the phenomenon, couldn't be more pervasive. Ducat's scholarship shines throughout this erudite, entertaining look at what passes for masculinity in our media-driven culture, surpassed only by his wit and sense of humor. While Freud might have asked, "What do women want?", Ducat's prescient analysis of who men mistakenly think thery are is likely to remain relevant long after late December, when this crazy election is likely to be settled, for better or (W)orse.
Scott Lines, Ph.D.
Clinical Psychologist
Berkeley, CA

Rating:
Summary: it seems to have pushed some buttons
Review: This was a good book, interesting theories, definitely of the psychoanalytical
school of thought. More interesting however, how any critisim of Bush illicits
such rabid and fanatical shrieks of defensive denial and "liberal", which has
some how been corrupted into the equivalent of "communist". Claiming to be dis-
crediting his analysis without providing sources is essentially meaningless as
Mr. Ducat DOES have sources to back up his claims. Screaming the loudest does not
make it so!

Rating:
Summary: Must Read for anyone interested in politics and gender
Review: When watching staged newscasts of politicians strutting around in military regalia and lugging carcasses through the woods, do you ever get the feeling that there's some, well, compensation going on? In _The Wimp Factor_, Ducat analyzes how our culture's interpretation of gender interacts with politics and political discourse from a psychological perspective. Ducat hypothesizes that since men must continuously prove themselves masculine to be accepted as such, they develop an unconcious fear of feminine "contamination," femiphobia, which spills over into the political arena. Each chapter looks at a different example of the gendering of politics, such as how Bill and Hillary Clinton's images changed before and after the Lewinsky scandal and how gendered language shapes voter perceptions of issue politics. The result is a very interesting and accessible book that contains scathing analysis with a witty sense of humor. Ducat focuses on men and masculinity, which leaves short shift for some other aspects of the topic and can leave the impression that he is being oversimplistic. For example, the section on the psychology of right-wing women was disappointingly brief. However, despite some out of context quotes lifted by other reviewers, Ducat does not essentialize all women as good and all men as evil, nor does he pretend that gender is the only factor at work in politics. He simply stays within the bounds of his topic. The biggest criticism I have is that the Freud-speak does become tiresome after a while (unless you happen to be a die-hard Freudian, I guess).