Has anyone read, The Male Body by Susan Bordo? Is it worth a read?

2012-06-15T17:29:24+00:00

Not really. Lot of it is that table-turning stuff about how the male body is looked at is because women are objectified etc.

DoctorStorm · 2012-06-15T23:04:01+00:00

The book, as well as Bordo, makes the fatal mistake of confusing generalizations and observations with hard science.

She's never struck me as particularly vulgar or overtly sexist, and I was glad to see a feminist discuss the societal perceptions of the male physique in a cold, calculating fashion.

However, she doesn't really have many high quality ideas. She consistently strings together basic observations, forms conclusions based on preexisting biases and assumptions, throws these conclusions back in the box with the initial observations, and repeats the process. Thankfully she does so in a very methodical, somewhat scientific fashion, if you'll allow for the very liberal use of the word scientific here, but musings on culture are ultimately conjecture. There is no disclaimer that you're reading conjecture, though. It's presented as viable, factual information, not opinion and personal theory.

It's her opinion, based on her observations. She's giving educated guesses. In the end, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that - nothing at all.

The problem I have with her, and her writing, specifically, is that it's often forced on college kids taking gender studies courses or similar classes. I am entirely opposed to teaching someone's perspective as if it was wholly, or largely, factual and accurate. There's a reason gender studies is a social science, and it's because it's not like physics and math. Social sciences are about subjective perspectives, collective agreements, give and take, so on and so forth. When these types of books are taught as hard science, it's going to negatively impact our society. In my opinion, we're already seeing how.

So...sorry for the book review. If you're asking if it's worth a read, then I'd say yes. If anything you can flip through and read the chapters that interest you in an afternoon.

Falkner09 · 2012-06-16T06:42:20+00:00

i found it very interesting and worth a read. it was really thought provoking about a lot of issues over the ideal male body and so on. i did feel like it could have gone more in depth, but it was still really good.

although for some reason, the last section of the book is heavily about the movie Lolita, and i simply could not see how it was relevant to the subject of the rest of the book. i think she might have thrown it in to pad the book for her publisher, but again, its still a good book.

McFeely_Smackup · 2012-06-15T20:24:46+00:00

I dunno.

Although after reading a few "How to please your man" articles in womens magazines, I'm fairly certain that the average woman has no freaking idea what mens bodies do or what they like.

Title	Has anyone read, The Male Body by Susan Bordo? Is it worth a read?
Author	doch_doch
Upvotes	0
Comments	5
Date	June 15, 2012 5:17 PM UTC (14 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/v3p0v/has_anyone_read_the_male_body_by_susan_bordo_is/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/has-anyone-read-the-male-body-by-susan-bordo-is-it.1019735 https://theredarchive.com/post/1019735

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